


Another Drive All Night

by McSpot



Series: Herb's Electronics [3]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Not Hockey Player(s), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 04:31:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16825195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McSpot/pseuds/McSpot
Summary: Ben knew that things never quite worked out for him.  He didn’t get the first house he put in a bid on; he couldn’t afford to go to his top-choice school.  He got turned down for job after job because people always found that he was somehow lacking.  He was good, but never quite good enough to be the best, to win the championship, to get his name recognized.He didn’t get the guy.Or, how Ben Bishop gets permission to steal his neighbor's dog and maybe steals his neighbor's heart in the process.





	Another Drive All Night

**Author's Note:**

> For everyone who wanted to know Ben's story. This pairing was chosen because I told scribetuesday I didn't know who to pair Ben with and we both independently came up with Cam Atkinson based entirely on the huge height difference. There is literally no real-life basis for this pairing, but there is also no real-life basis for any of these fics.
> 
> Directly follows and somewhat overlaps with Carey's fic. Huge thanks to @silverceri on Tumblr for the super-quick beta.
> 
> This story contains: pairings that I 100% made up, fictional family members, insanely short timelines, rom-com meet-cutes, hover-over Google Translate Russian translations, Personal Growth, and the World's Best Puppy.
> 
> Title from "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" by the Beastie Boys.

Ben had always wanted to be a baker.

Most people scoffed when he said that, looking him up and down – and up, and up.

"You're such a big kid," his coach back in middle school used to say, "Why don't you try going pro?"

"You have really good grades," his teachers said in high school, "Why don't you try going into science?"

Ben had learned at a young age how to smile bashfully and quietly demur. Some would say it must have taken a herculean amount of restraint not to ask them what they thought was so wrong with being a baker – what his size or his grades had to do with his dreams – but Ben had always found it was easier to duck his head and keep his mouth shut until they found something else to focus on.

He never was much one for fighting back.

Baking was all he'd ever really wanted to do. He loved hockey, had never really lost his love for the sport, but he'd never imagined himself playing professionally. Maybe he could have made it, if he really put his heart into it and ground it out in the minors for a while, maybe someone would have noticed him after a few years and given him a chance. But there was an incredible bottleneck for goaltender talent, and Ben had just never been able to convince himself it was worth it to keep trying for something he may never achieve when what he knew he wanted to do was so much more accessible.

Paul seemed to understand, at least a little. He and Ben didn't talk about it much – most of Ben's coworkers didn't even know that he'd used to play hockey, and only Carey knew what position – but when they did, Paul talked about how when he knew he couldn't play hockey anymore, he had baking to fall back on, something else that he knew he could maybe love as much, something to make him happy.

It was the other way around for Ben. Hockey was always secondary, was in a strange way his back-up plan. It was something he was fairly good at, but not his dream. None of his friends really seemed to look at it that way, and so he didn't try to explain.

Ever since he was a kid, Ben had wanted to bake, just like his mom. It was always _their thing_ , the special thing they did together, just the two of them. Cakes, cookies, pies – everything she touched was magazine-perfect, and Ben was lucky enough to be able to help.

It had been his mom's passion too, and it showed in how she made it look effortless. She was the sort of baker who had dozens of recipes memorized, who knew how to measure ingredients without teaspoons or measuring cups and could improvise substitutes and alterations on the fly and still make everything come out flawlessly. Even though she knew what she was doing, she would always pull out her recipe box and find the right card so that Ben could follow along. He'd first learned to read tracing his small fingers over the perfect, even script of her index cards.

His elementary school teachers were always astounded by his math skills; evidently his ability to calculate fractions was well beyond his age level.

His mother didn't just teach him math and reading through baking. She taught him about life.

"Have you ever heard that actions speak louder than words?" she would ask. He would shake his head obligingly.

"Well," she would say, brushing her dark hair off of her forehead, leaving a streak of flour in its wake. "In all of my years, I've never had a problem that a good apology pie couldn't fix."

Pies were for apologies, and cupcakes were for celebrations. Muffins meant "get well soon," and coffee cake was for condolences.

She had her own self-created language made entirely of desserts, but the most amazing thing was that it actually worked.

"You can never forget the words, though, Benji," she said, rubbing his small, bony shoulders. "A cake or a pie is a good place to start, but you can't forget that the words are just as important."

He'd never understood quite what that meant. By the time he thought to ask, it was already too late.

When people started dropping off casseroles with too many ingredients and crock-pots full of stew, giving him sickly smiles and patting him on the head and telling him how "brave" he was being just by continuing to exist in her absence, he thought maybe he was starting to understand what she had meant.

~~~

Ben's favorite part about working at Herb's Electronics – after his coworkers, of course – was the creative freedom he had there. While he'd originally been brought on as an assistant baker, which would usually mean doing some of the easier baking to give Paul more time to work on more complicated special orders, he'd quickly found that Paul was open to anything Ben wanted to do. When Ben suggested that they should try selling citrus and raspberry scones for the summer season, Paul had shrugged and told him to see if they had any ingredients they needed to buy. He didn't even bat an eye when Ben asked if he could try using his own double fudge brownie recipe, and that was the sort of remark that got you stabbed with a fork in most bakeries.

His last job had involved baking cakes and pastries that were later frozen and shipped to grocery stores to be sold in their own bakery sections. Everything had to be uniform and entirely identical; the stores wanted every order to be just like the last, every time.

It had been baking, so it was better than nothing, but it was mind-numbingly repetitive and monotonous. It had none of the spark that had made Ben love baking, none of the warmth that his mother had always instilled in it.

Herb's Electronics was quite honestly a godsend. For the first time, Ben was not only able to experiment and sell his own recipes, but it was actively encouraged. Paul didn't have the sort of proprietary concerns that most head bakers would, and he actually seemed to like Ben, as an individual.

That was the other thing that had made it so amazing – Herb's Electronics came built-in with a group of people who, for reasons that were beyond Ben's understanding, actually all gave a damn about each other.

It was weird, that they all fit so well together. Somehow, in a city of over half a million people, the five of them had all found each other, all of them looking for a fresh start in a new town. Honestly, the fact that they'd all played hockey at some point and were now living in Tennessee was probably the weirdest part.

The best part of it, though, was that nobody asked about each other's past. They teased, sometimes – guessing at Carey's past was only entertaining because the more ridiculous their suggestions, the more comically stoic he would become, like "runaway circus clown" was the right answer and he was trying to keep his cool so they didn't find out. But nobody pushed, and if they got close to it, they would shut up with a raised eyebrow or a pointed silence.

Of course, you picked up on things with time. James and Paul used to play hockey together, and were somehow injured in the same incident that ended their careers. Carey was literally on the run from something, if the way he got antsy and eyed the door sometimes meant anything. And Kuzya...well, he was probably the most normal one of them all, because it made sense why a kid from Russia might decide to go to university in the U.S. But he got a little quiet sometimes when talking about home, just the slightest tightening around his eyes that was enough to indicate that he had some things that he'd rather not think about too.

Ben usually slid him a cookie, and that was enough to make him smile again.

That cookie was often repaid with a latte decorated with the Washington Capitals' weagle logo. Apparently Kuzya also felt that sweets spoke louder than words.

In the scale of things, Ben figured that his story was pretty run of the mill. It wasn't really worth talking about, and so he didn't talk about it. The boys didn't seem to really notice if he was tight-lipped about it, not the way they noticed Carey.

Carey had noticed it, of course.

"You know, I can talk to you for hours and feel like I know everything about you," he'd once said over lunch, "And if you handed me a pen and paper and asked me to write down the actual facts that I knew about you afterwards, I don't think I'd be able to come up with a single one."

Ben had shaken his head, feeling an incredulous smile crawl across his lips.

"You know me," he'd said, laughing, dismissive.

Carey knew him better than anyone else.

For a while, he'd thought that he knew Carey better than anyone else, too.

He'd been wrong.

~~~

The happy daze that Ben's life had settled into in Nashville came to a tragic, record-scratching halt in November, two years after he'd started at the bakery.

It had been a pretty normal morning:

Ben was up and out for his morning run by seven. Max had joined him again that morning, and Ben was in a good mood, so he let Max stay with him for the rest of his run. Max was some sort of shepherd mix, a fluffy, mottled mass of tans and browns and blacks with way too much energy to spare, and Ben figured the run might tire him out enough to keep him from hopping the fence again later that day. Besides, Max was a great companion, keeping up with a happy, tongue-lolling pant, not even needing a leash to know to stick close to Ben and to wait for Ben before crossing the road.

He'd be the perfect dog if he wasn't such a storied and successful escape artist.

Just like always, Ben finished his run by tucking a note in Max's collar telling his owner that he'd escaped again and ushering him back through the chain-link gate to his yard. He wrote up another note and wedged it into the doorjamb of the house's front entrance, knowing that it would be ignored as well. He'd written so many notes that he started carrying a notepad with him on his run every day, just in case.

He'd said goodbye to Max, knowing that they'd probably be running partners again the next morning anyway, and headed home to take a shower and get ready for work. He was in the door by nine, just like every day. Paul had him on pie duty, same as the day before, all to be frozen for customers to bake at home for Thanksgiving. Today Ben was doing apple pies, which he honestly preferred to pumpkin anyway.

Ben and Carey had a fairly regular standing lunch date, most days when Carey finished his shift and Ben was about midway through his own. On that day Ben was running a little late, wanting to put top crusts on his current batch and get them wrapped and frozen before he left. Carey had said that he didn't mind, and given the way Kuzya had thrust one of his school papers at him, he was probably going to be kept busy.

Things took a turn for the weird when Ben had left the walk-in freezer to find not only Kuzya, but James and, strangely enough, Paul, all piled up around the door leading from the kitchen to the storefront. It wasn't necessarily unusual to see his coworkers do that – Carey had taken to it lately, which was pretty out of character for him – but it was weird to have all three of them doing it, especially when Kuzya was supposed to be manning the front.

"What are you guys doing?" he started to ask, only to receive three very irritated shushes.

Ben rolled his eyes and pulled his apron off, hanging it on one of the pegs on the wall, next to Carey's.

"Okay, whatever. Carey and I are going to grab lunch. When I get back I'll-"

Three sets of hands reached out to push him back before he could get to the door.

"Maybe not today, man." James tried to nudge him backwards, forgetting that Ben could really only be moved when he felt like moving. Ben would have chirped him about it, but he was mostly just confused, and maybe a little concerned, given the nervous looks James was casting at the door.

"What are you talking about? What's going on?"

If it was just James being James, he wouldn't have worried. If it had only been Kuzya, Ben would have laughed it off. But instead it was Paul putting a hand on his shoulder and looking him in the eyes and saying, "Hey, Ben, what if you come up to my place and I'll make us all lunch today?"

Paul didn't play jokes, and he didn't get dramatic over nothing.

And Paul looked really, really fucking concerned.

Ben looked back at the door. In a low, even voice, he asked, "Guys. What's going on?"

Only Paul would meet his eyes, and what he saw there told Ben that he wasn't going to like it.

He shook his head and reached for the door, only to have both James and Kuzya jump in the way.

"Bad idea!" Kuzya said, while at the same time James yelped, "We have termites!"

Trying very, very hard not to roll his eyes, Ben shouldered past them both and pushed the door open.

"Look, I don't know what you two are talking about-"

He took one step through the door, and he saw exactly what they were talking about.

Herb's Electronics didn't have termites, but it did have a bad case of the Nashville Predators. Ever since James had gotten together with one, they'd been a common feature at the bakery, usually coming in small packs like buying pastries in a group could keep their team nutritionist from figuring out which one of them was guilty.

There was currently one in the front of the store, making out with Carey.

Suddenly, Ben had a very clear idea of exactly what it was that Carey had left behind in Montreal – or who.

Subban was starting to smirk, and Ben knew he meant nothing by it – couldn't have meant anything by it. He'd met Ben before, in those strange instances where James had forced Ben to help him play shoddy barista – those instances, he realized, where Carey was conspicuously avoiding Subban. There was no animosity between them, no reason for Subban to want to rub something in Ben's face.

No, Subban probably just thought it was funny how Ben had started to go so red, the type of flush that crawled up his neck all the way to his ears and highlighted how far they stuck out. He knew for a fact that his whole chest would be red by now too, his entire body feeling jittery and far too hot.

Carey looked at him once, just briefly, before he turned back to Subban, still wrapped up so tightly in Subban's embrace like there was nowhere else he would rather be.

He had never looked at Ben like that before. He never would have.

 _Fuck_ , he was such an idiot.

How long had it been going on? All of this time, he was reading into things, thinking that the way Carey smiled at him meant something, that the fact that he told Ben things he didn't tell the others was a sign that Ben was special to him.

Ben had never been special to anyone before. There was no reason to start now.

"Oh," he heard himself say, nearly a whisper. God, he must have been so pathetically eager, so desperate. "I, uh…sorry. I guess we're skipping lunch today."

And Carey had put up with it _every day_ without saying anything? All this time, he was trying to let Ben down gently, and Ben had just- he had thought-

He hadn't thought. That was the problem. If he'd used his head all along, he never would have gotten himself into this mess. He never would have assumed that, that he could have more. That anyone would _want_ more, with him.

Ben knew that things never quite worked out for him. He didn't get the first house he put in a bid on; he couldn't afford to go to his top-choice school. He got turned down for job after job because people always found that he was somehow lacking. He was good, but never quite good enough to be the best, to win the championship, to get his name recognized.

He didn't get the guy.

He should have known better.

"I'll, um..." He ducked his head and shoved his way back through the door. Some absurd part of him wanted Carey to come after him, to check up on him, to tell him that he had it all wrong and actually Carey felt the exact same way about Ben as Ben did about him and kissing Subban was just some sort of practice.

Carey didn't follow him, and that stung all the more.

He couldn't bear to see the way the other three were staring at him, the wells of pity in their eyes. God, they had all known, hadn't they? There was no way Carey hadn't realized, if he was that obvious. Here Ben prided himself on keeping things close to his chest and he'd had his whole hand on display, probably for years. He couldn't remember a time in the past two years where he didn't have a crush on Carey.

Honestly, that should have told him everything he needed to know right there. If Carey hadn't said anything in two years, there was probably a reason for it. Ben was just too blind – or too obstinate – to see it.

"Hey," James started to say, in that same voice you might use to calm a startled animal. He never sounded that way, about anything, and that just made it harder to hear.

Ben held up a hand to cut him off.

"I'm okay," he said. But his smile felt wobbly even to him, and based on the looks they all gave him, nobody else was believing it.

Paul gave him an inscrutable look.

"Come up to mine, we'll do lunch-"

Fuck, but that was the last thing Ben wanted right now.

"Thank you for the offer, but I'm just, I'm going to-" He nodded towards the door – the back one, this time, the one that would keep him from having to run into Carey and Subban again.

Paul and James exchanged one of their looks, the wordless kind that came from having spent way too much time together, and James nodded.

"How about you take the rest of the day off? Tomorrow too, if you need it."

Ben startled. "I can't do that, it's busy season, and we have-"

"Ben." Paul's tone made him fall silent. "I can handle things on my own for a bit. Take a personal day for once, God knows you never call in."

He couldn't do anything but nod, not with them all staring like that, like they – fuck, they must have pitied him so much, to receive this sort of treatment. How pathetic had he been?

Two-years-of-pining levels of pathetic, at the very least.

Ben didn't really have it in him to keep protesting when all he wanted was to be as far away from the bakery as possible, and so he nodded and thanked Paul and left before he could somehow make things even worse.

He didn't go into work the next morning. It didn't really feel better, to still be lying in bed by the time nine o'clock rolled around, but it was preferable to having to face all of his coworkers again.

His phone buzzed at half past nine, a text from Carey, _Where are you?_ A moment later, _You're not coming in today?_

The mature thing to do would be to answer, to tell Carey that he was fine, to make up an excuse that had nothing to do with Carey unwittingly rejecting his affections and Ben being so pathetic that his bosses would offer him a day off to sulk about it.

Ben turned his phone off and rolled over in bed.

Sometime around eleven he finally dragged himself up, once he admitted to himself that lying awake staring at the wall wasn't doing anything to make him feel better and in fact just made him feel bad about himself for lying in bed all day.

He showered, spending far too much time staring at the way the water went down the drain instead of actually getting clean. It was nearly noon by the time he was dressed. He didn't really feel like eating, but he made himself some toast anyway, knowing that skipping meals wasn't going to make him feel better in the long-run.

He didn't have coffee, because it felt just a little too masochistic on a day like today.

Ben was tempted to go back to bed, or to sit on the couch and do the living room equivalent of the same pity party he'd been having in his bedroom. It wouldn't fix anything, though – in the end he would still be alone, he'd just feel even worse.

Instead he jammed his feet in his shoes, pulled on a light jacket, and dragged himself out of the house.

He wasn't feeling up to running, but it was a pretty nice day for a walk.

Ben was pretty much never home at this time on a weekday, and it was strange to see the neighborhood so quiet. Nobody else was outside, no kids in the yard after getting out of school, none of Ben's other regular early morning joggers. The only thing he could hear was the rustle of the leaves overhead, a few shaking loose and falling down around him.

Autumn in Nashville looked and felt a lot like autumn in St. Louis, but Ben could have sworn that he could tell the difference. There was a certain freedom to Nashville, like anyone could have a new start and shake off the clinging remains of their past. Ben could taste it in the air the day he moved into the dorms at school years ago.

There was no way that Ben could mistake the two.

He continued walking down the street, shoving his hands in his pockets for a lack of something better to do, listening to the leaves crunch satisfyingly under his feet.

They were fast approaching the holiday season, and that was usually when Ben got a little too reflective for his own good. Most years he did okay, surrounding himself with work and friends until he couldn't remember why he would ever feel upset.

But today work and friends were the problem, and so he couldn't afford himself that escape.

He really, really missed his mom.

That was the crux of it all, really. She was a baker, and just like Ben and Paul, her busiest season was when the holidays started coming around. Everything reminded him of her: the smell of warm pumpkin and cinnamon hanging in a thick cloud over the kitchen, the feeling of holding a mug of hot chocolate between your palms while waiting impatiently for chocolate chip cookies to finish. Even the colorful leaves swirling around him sent Ben right back to when he was a kid and his mom would send him out to pick out the best ones to use in centerpieces.

He wished he could talk to her now. He'd never known her at an age where having his heart broken was something that they would talk about, but he knew she would have been a good shoulder to cry on, even all the way from St. Louis. She'd have listened patiently, and talked him through it, and at the end she would have him thinking that he was better off now than he would have been had he been in a relationship.

And then she would send him snickerdoodles, because snickerdoodles were for encouragement.

The holidays were going to be particularly weird this year. Ben had spent the holidays alone for so long since he had moved to Nashville that he'd been stunned when everyone was invited over to Paul's for Thanksgiving.

"It's too expensive for me to travel home for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, and before you came along, I had nobody to do the baking if I left town for a few days," Paul had said when he'd first given Ben the invitation two years ago. True to form, he hadn't once looked up from the dough he was kneading. "Usually James and I just hang out on the couch eating turkey and watching football anyways, so I figured, why not invite everyone?"

Then he'd looked up at Ben and honest-to-God winked. "Besides, it would be nice to have another American around for once to celebrate the real Thanksgiving."

And when Ben had hesitantly asked if he could bring the pumpkin pie, Paul was entirely unfazed.

The day had been a resounding success, even when three of the invitees didn't have a holiday to celebrate that day anyway. Kuzya was highly opinionated on American football for somebody who claimed to have never watched it before in his life, to the point where Paul nearly shoved him off the couch for suggesting that anyone could be better than his Vikings. James fell asleep almost instantly after eating his weight in food, which Paul said was fairly typical – of course, this didn't stop him from waking up forty-five minutes later and going for seconds.

Carey had sat next to Ben on the couch, smiling at their friends and nudging Ben's arm with his own so that Ben would look at him, so that Ben could share in his amusement and they could grin secretively at each other about the ridiculousness of their lives.

And Ben? Ben had watched people enjoying his mother's pumpkin pie for the first time in over twenty years, and he had felt like maybe he had found a family here.

The first Christmas had been slightly different, but its own special kind of magic. James and Paul had both gone to their respective hometowns to spend Christmas with their families. Then it had been Ben and Carey and Kuzya eating dinner in a Chinese restaurant, handing gifts back and forth over the table while Kuzya laughed cheerfully at references to _A Christmas Story_ that he absolutely did not understand. He told them that he didn't need to understand, because nothing about their "fake Christmas" made sense to him anyway.

Ben had given them both hot chocolate cupcakes. Carey gave everyone socks, and not even holiday socks, but six-packs of white Hanes athletic socks, and he was utterly unashamed when they gave him shit for it.

Kuzya gave them Washington Capitals holiday ornaments.

It was the best Christmas Ben had had since his mom died.

The next year had been a blissful repeat of the first, and Ben had started to think that he'd fallen into a routine, developing traditions and rituals the way that all families did.

A breeze started blowing behind him, sending a rush of cool air up the back of his jacket.

Ben shivered and pulled his coat tighter around him.

This year would be different.

For one, Thanksgiving was already going to be different because the Predators were going to be in the middle of a home stand over Thanksgiving. Ben hadn't cared at all that Rich was going to be at Paul's for Thanksgiving this year – it wasn't like Rich wasn't around all the time anyway – but now there was a more than non-zero chance that PK Subban would be there too.

Ben was happy for Carey, he truly was, but he wasn't sure he was going to stop feeling so brittle and overemotional by next Thursday in time for him to not make an ass out of himself in front of Carey and PK. He'd spent far too much time in bed that morning making contingency plans for how he could escape from Thanksgiving early if things got to be too much. He didn't need to inflict his drama upon everyone else.

Christmas, though...well, that wouldn't be a problem. Carey's family was coming down for Christmas, and Ben had no doubt in his mind that they would be spending it with PK. He wouldn't have to worry about seeing Carey at all then.

He shook his head at himself, rubbing a hand over his face. He was being ridiculous. Carey was his friend, and his coworker. He was going to see Carey pretty much every day, and so he had to get used to the idea that Carey just wasn't interested and never had been.

Fuck, he'd never been this overwrought over a stupid crush before. He wasn't even this upset when he found out that his boyfriend had been cheating on him in college.

He really needed to find some distraction in his life.

Looking back, Ben would say that maybe there was something a little fated about that moment, because it was just then that he was approaching Max's house, and he had only just started to lift his head up when a brown blur leapt gracefully over the chain-link fence.

Max scampered over to Ben immediately, his whole body wriggling in excitement. As soon as he saw Ben looking at him he was rolling over onto his back, squirming around on the sidewalk in hopes of enticing Ben into rubbing his belly.

"You are completely shameless," Ben said. Max whimpered and rolled around more, his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. He had dark brown eyes, so dark that it was hard to tell where his pupil began, and those eyes were incredibly pathetic right about now.

Ben never could hold out long when those eyes were turned on him.

"Oh, fine," he grumbled, kneeling down to the cold pavement and burying his hands in Max's fur. Max wriggled happily, all while trying to crane his neck so that he could lick Ben's hands while Ben petted him.

This was just what he needed. Someone who was always happy to see him, who would always be there for him, who wouldn't turn out to have a secret not-so-ex-boyfriend from Montreal to show up and crush all of Ben's fantasies of finally having his own happily ever after.

Well. Except for the fact that Max wasn't actually Ben's dog.

That kind of put a damper on things.

"Maybe your owners are home this time of day?" Ben asked Max. He felt rather skeptical of that, but he'd never tried looking for them outside of early morning or late evening, so it was a possibility. If the way that Max lunged upwards to lick Ben's chin meant anything, he probably approved.

"Alright." Ben groaned a little as he hauled himself to his feet. He would always blame years of playing goalie for the way his knees had started cracking before he was even thirty. "C'mon, bud, let's go take a look."

He didn't have to check to know that Max would follow him up to the front door. It was a regular part of their routine at this point, the only difference from the norm being that usually Ben let Max come on his walk with him first.

The house looked empty, just as it always did. Ben wasn't sure if he'd ever actually seen a car in the driveway, but somebody had to be living there because Max wasn't outside all of the time. It was a raised ranch, so Ben had to jog up a few steps in order to get to the door.

He rang the doorbell and knocked on the door for good measure, before leaning back on his heels to wait. Max stood patiently at his side, panting softly and watching Ben with an openly hopeful expression until Ben finally gave in and scratched behind his ears.

Ben tried again about a minute later after hearing no sounds from the inside, but he couldn't even pretend to be surprised when that attempt went unanswered as well.

"Guess they're not here, huh?" he asked Max. Max licked his hand, which Ben chose to take as an affirmation.

He shook his head and sighed. "Not even worth it to waste the paper on a note, is it?"

Max, predictably, didn't respond.

"That's fine, I didn't bring my notepad anyways. Let's get you back in your yard, buddy. I'm not going for a run today, I don't want to bore you."

It was probably pretty difficult to bore a dog, seeing as Max was entertained by licking his own junk. Max seemed to agree, nosing at Ben's hand before pressing his face into it.

He was probably lonely too. God knows, his owner never seemed to be home. Max spent most of his days bored and alone.

On his worst days, Ben thought about just taking Max home with him and keeping him. It was easy to tell himself that his owner would never notice, seeing as he barely seemed to look after his dog in the first place.

The closest he had ever gotten was on his day off this past July, when he'd gone on his run a little later in the morning, just as the heat was starting to become particularly oppressive. Max had joined him that morning too, and Ben couldn't help but notice that he was panting heavily in the heat. When he'd brought Max back to his yard, it was hard not to notice the lack of shade or even a bowl of water.

He'd told himself that Max would be fine, that surely his owner would bring him inside soon.

And then when noon had come and passed, Ben was bored enough to take a stroll past Max's house. Max had rushed to the fence to meet him, nimbly scrambling over the top without a pause and landing at Ben's feet, bouncing around excitedly like he hadn't just seen Ben a few hours ago.

He'd still been outside. Still no shade, still no water, the note still tied to his collar from earlier that morning, with the sun high in the sky and heat warnings flashing across every news source.

For the first and only time in his life, Ben mildly kidnapped a dog. _Mildly_ because he was really just borrowing him for a few hours, just taking him home and giving him water and letting him hang out in the air conditioning until the weather cooled down.

It made something go tight in his chest, to see how happily Max investigated his house, sniffing every nook and cranny before hopping up on the couch like he owned the place and settling in. Ben had taken a photo of him and sent it to the guys, who had responded with a variety of screaming emojis and punctuation marks.

That was the photo Kuzya put on the wall at Herb's, printed out in the same awful grainy black and white that James used for all of his Employee of the Month awards. He'd drawn a heart around it and written something in Russian that nobody had bothered to decipher. When customers asked, he proudly told them that it was a picture of his friend Max. He never seemed to be bothered by the fact that he'd never actually met Max before.

It had been hard to bring Max home that evening. There had still been no sign that anyone was home, that anyone had noticed Max was gone at all. And when Ben put Max back in his yard, he stared up at Ben the same way that he did now, open and trusting and pleading for Ben not to leave him alone.

Ben could only turn down that face so many times.

Heaving his greatest sigh yet, he leaned down until he could press his forehead against Max's, holding Max's face between his hands.

"I guess you can come with me," he said, looking into Max's warm brown eyes.

Max licked his cheek for his troubles and wagged his tail.

He never left Ben's side once the whole walk.

~~~

Ben didn't quite slink into work that morning, but he did walk in with his hood up and his head down, beelining to the back like Carey somehow might not see him if he didn't make eye contact.

He had to walk within a foot of Carey to reach the door to the kitchen, so he shouldn't have been that surprised that his plan didn't work.

Ben told himself that he should just take pride in the fact that he didn't just creep in the back like he'd been considering.

"Hey man, you doing okay?" Carey stopped him with a hand on his arm. Ben looked at the hand, sure and strong around his forearm, and couldn't stop the traitorous, unbidden wish that Carey meant it as more than brief concern for a coworker.

His eyes trailed up Carey's arm back to his face, just for a moment, before his eyes flicked back down to Carey's hand.

It took far longer than it should for Ben to carefully drag his arm away, pulling it in close like a bird with a broken wing.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." He put on his best don't-look-at-me smile. It was usually fairly effective. It had worked well all throughout high school and college.

In all honesty, it had worked perfectly up until he'd met Carey Price.

Carey had always had a way of getting in behind all of Ben's defenses, right from the start.

It was Ben's fault for thinking that it must have meant something special.

"Dude." There was a lot of weight in Carey's one word, an admonishment wrapped in disappointment punctuated with an unspoken question.

But Ben had already read too deeply into their relationship before, thought that they were closer than they were. He wasn't going to make that mistake again.

"It's nothing, Pricey. Just felt a little under the weather yesterday, didn't want to make the customers sick by preparing their food. You know how it is."

They both knew that Carey didn't really believe him, but there wasn't an easy way for him to dispute that. If it was anyone else, Ben would say the look that Carey gave him was wounded, but it was Carey, so it came off looking more mildly irritated.

He stepped out of the way to let Ben pass, though, and Ben couldn't be more thankful for that. Ben could tolerate a lot of discomfort, but that didn't mean he wanted to have to stand face to face with Carey for extended periods of time. At least not when he was still licking his wounds and getting over himself.

With enough time, he'd be okay. With enough time, they could go back to being normal friends again.

"We're still on for lunch, right?" Carey asked. He almost sounded hesitant; Ben didn't know Carey even had the _ability_ to sound hesitant.

His chest twinged uncomfortably; Ben told himself he should take some Tums for that.

"Uh, yeah, of course."

Ben always was a pushover, where it counted. It took him eighteen years to stand up to his dad, after all.

At least he could tell himself that lunch with Carey was some sort of exposure therapy. Maybe if he watched Carey be happy with someone else for long enough, it would start to hurt less.

Today, though, today it was just an exercise in masochism.

But it made Carey smile at him, the real thing, small and dimpled and without a hint of sarcasm, and today, Ben still wasn't quite strong enough not to be moved by that.

When Ben came into the kitchen, Paul was giving him one of his looks, the kind where he continued rolling out dough on a floured board and didn't look up at Ben once, but Ben could feel his eyes boring into him all the same.

"Don't give me that," he muttered, pulling his apron on over his head and heading to the sink to wash his hands. "I know what I'm doing."

A moment's pause.

"I'm happy for him. Really."

Paul hummed and continued rolling out his dough. "I never said you weren't."

His silence was more damning than his words.

~~~

Max had moved into Ben's neighborhood some time last spring. One day, Ben had been jogging past a vacant house, and the next – instant running partner.

This meant that he'd been returning Max to his home on an almost-daily basis for more than six months.

In all of that time, in all of those notes Ben had attached to Max's collar and the front door of his home, Ben had always assumed that he would eventually meet Max's owner somewhere in his neighborhood. Even if they were callous enough to never respond to his notes or at least make sure they secured their dog, he figured that eventually he'd see someone getting in and out of a car, at the very least.

Ben had always imagined he'd have some very choice words to share with Max's owner, when they finally revealed themselves.

But he'd never imagined that they'd show up at his place of work, nor that they'd bring their own espresso maker to a coffee shop.

They didn't know it was Max's owner at first, of course. He didn't come in wearing a hat saying "Max's Dad" on it, and to be honest if he had, Ben would have said that he didn't deserve it after how neglectful he'd been.

At first, all anyone knew was that a short guy clutching a large appliance to his chest came bursting through the front door hard enough that he nearly broke their poor little bell. He was panting heavily as if he'd just sprinted down the street while carrying the espresso machine, and Ben would have worried that the poor guy would sweat through his rather expensive-looking polo if he wasn't so busy being distracted by the way he filled out his khakis that were just this side of too tight.

Carey nudged him none-too-gently in the gut to drag Ben back to reality and to the tray of blueberry scones that had been rather close to slipping out of his hands. The sly smile he sent Ben's way stung more than any physical pain.

Ben quickly averted his eyes and busied himself with fixing the tray into the display case.

"Can I help you, sir? You know, we supply the coffee so that you don't have to." Carey had put on his own version of a customer service voice, which was just the right type of bored to sound cool and nonchalant but wouldn't be enough to get people complaining he didn't care. It was an art that Ben had never been able to perfect, because he usually came off as painfully sincere.

The guy was looking around himself in bewilderment, like he'd stumbled into another world and suddenly found himself set upon by coffee and pastries and the hundreds of fake leaves that James had "artfully" strewn around the storefront in the name of trying to attract people to take more selfies with their products.

"This is...not an electronics store." The man slowly backed out of the door, setting the bell ringing merrily a second time. They watched through the window as he backed up until he was on the sidewalk, craned his neck until he could see the shop's name painted on the brick above, squinted, and then shot them the most offended look imaginable through the window.

As if his purpose had been renewed, the man came storming back through the door, setting the bell ringing frantically once again.

He jostled the appliance in his hands as if trying and failing to free one. Finally, after a good ten seconds of letting Ben and Carey watch this with increasingly unimpressed expressions, he gave up and sat the espresso machine down on the counter so that he could point a hand towards the entrance.

"Your sign says that this is an electronics store, but this looks like a coffee shop."

Ben hadn't heard anyone sound that offended at the idea of Herb's Electronics serving coffee since the last time James had been working the front counter.

Carey always was an asshole at heart, and so he didn't skip a beat as he made a point of checking out the display case next to him. "I'd say it's a bakery too."

The noise the man made this time sounded downright outraged, tinged with the slightest hint of increasing desperation.

"But you don't repair electronics, do you? Why would you call your store 'Herb's Electronics' if you were going to sell coffee?"

"That's a question for our corporate offices," Carey said blandly. It was easy for Ben to see that Carey was enjoying himself, even if the customer seemed near to ripping his curly blond hair from his head.

The man was only looking increasingly stressed out, far more than was called for by Carey teasing him, so Ben decided to cut him some slack.

"It's just the name of the store. It used to sell and repair electronics, now it's been repurposed. The owners never bothered to change the sign."

"The owners think they can get away with being cutesy hipsters," Carey quipped.

"You should try SJS Electrical a few blocks up," Ben said. "That's just about the only place around here that might repair appliances."

The guy frowned and pulled his espresso machine closer to his chest.

"SJS?"

"Suddenly Just Salad," Carey interjected before Ben could get another word out. He must have been sitting on that one for a while if he was so excited to use it. "It's about three blocks north of here."

As far as Google could tell them, SJS Electrical was the only place in the area that actually repaired electronics anymore. Back in the day, it had allegedly been Paul's Uncle Herb's only real competition in the cutthroat field of Nashville's secondhand electronics and repairs. None of them had a clue what SJS stood for, but it had become a point of pride to come up with increasingly absurd suggestions every time they had to reroute a wayward customer.

And damn it, but Ben had really been looking forward to trying out Shoddy Jellyfish Samples.

The customer must have been feeling particularly harried, because his face only pinched in confusion for a moment before he shook his head like he didn't have time to worry about it.

He hoisted his espresso machine back into his arms – and his arms did look rather nice flexing to carry it, even if it was kind of dumb that he'd run into the store with an appliance to begin with – and looked like he was about to leave when his eyes caught on something behind the counter. He squinted again, and really, that couldn't have been good for his eyes to strain them that way.

Then Ben got a good look at his green eyes, because they were suddenly very, very wide.

"Is that a picture of my _dog_?" the man gasped.

Ben looked over his own shoulder at what he knew to be Kuzya's picture of Max, and then _slowly_ dragged his gaze back to the man in front of him.

In a low voice he said, "For your sake, you better hope it's not. Otherwise, you have a lot of explaining to do."

And that was how Ben first met Cam Atkinson, stockbroker, owner of a malfunctioning espresso machine, and Max's dad.

~~~

Ben only learned Cam's name because it was on the business card that he threw at Ben on his way out the door, clumsily bundling his espresso machine in his arms the way one would a toddler in winter wear.

He'd only stood still long enough for Ben to begin to explain how he knew Max before Cam's smartwatch had gone off with some sort of alarm, and Cam must have known what it was for because he immediately started cursing and fumbling in his pocket for the card, which he'd all but tossed in Ben's face.

"Call me to discuss!" he'd shouted as he hustled out the door with his appliance.

Ben's eye must have been twitching, because Carey clapped him on the shoulder.

"Wow, Max's owner seems like a dick."

Ben hummed, still staring out the front window even though Cam was long gone.

Carey crossed his arms and nodded. "At least he made those pants look good, eh?"

From the way he started laughing when Ben choked and sputtered, he'd definitely just said it to get a rise out of him. But maybe it could be progress, if they could be that kind of friends.

That still didn't change that Ben thought very lowly of Cam Atkinson, no matter how good he looked in those pants. Nobody should neglect their dog the way he had Max.

It would take a hell of a lot of work to change Ben's opinion.

~~~

Ben was still fairly irritated with Cam on the drive home that day, if only for the way he'd run out of the coffee shop like it didn't really matter to him that these strangers all seemed to know his dog. The presumptuousness of expecting that Ben would then take time out of his day to call him, because Cam couldn't make time to worry about his dog _now_ , didn't sit well with him at all.

He almost didn't place a call based on that alone, and it said something about how upset he was, seeing as Ben holding onto spite was just about as common as Kuzya complimenting the Pittsburgh Penguins.

And then he got home to find Max _waiting in his fucking driveway_. Max was in excellent spirits, dancing from foot to foot as he waited for Ben to get out of the car, making excitable whining sounds as he immediately began nosing at Ben's hands looking for attention.

Ben was in a considerably worse mood, because this was not only the first time that he'd ever seen Max hop the fence of his own accord without Ben having to at least walk by first to inspire his jailbreak, but this also meant that Max had traveled around the block to get here, including crossing the street, all on his own.

It had to be noted that it was pretty impressive that Max remembered which house was Ben's after only having been there once before some months ago. What a smart boy.

Max whined sweetly and put his paws up on Ben's leg so that Ben could scratch his stomach while he sat, and it would have been adorable if Ben wasn't so angry at his owner.

"I'm going to kill him," he cooed to Max, bending down so that their faces were closer. Max immediately licked his chin excitedly. "Yes I am, I'm going to kill your stupid, obnoxious little owner, and then you could come live with me. Would you like that?"

Max licked his chin again, so Ben was going to take that as a yes.

The worst part was that he was fairly sure that at least three of his four coworkers would help him in his endeavors. Kuzya would probably execute a hit for him if Ben said it meant that he could visit with Max.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

Murder probably shouldn't be his first plan of attack. He should exhaust his other options first.

"Let's go yell at your owner," he said to Max, running his fingers through the soft, caramel brown fur of Max's cheeks. Max nosed at his hands again, sparing him another lick. He followed eagerly as Ben began walking, keeping pace with him and only wandering a few steps away to investigate suspicious leaves before bolting back to Ben's side.

He really was such a good dog, if he wasn't so prone to making dangerous decisions in his fits of boredom.

Ben couldn't even say it was a surprise that it looked like nobody was home at Max's house. He already knew that Cam thought it was okay to leave Max unattended outdoors all day long, so it shouldn't surprise him that he'd done it again today too.

There was a certain feeling of vindication that came with standing on Cam's porch and calling the number on his business card.

"Hello?" Cam sounded wary when he answered the phone.

Ben put on his most saccharine customer service voice. This must be how soccer moms felt when they called corporate on retail employees.

"Hi, this is Ben Bishop. We spoke earlier today at Herb's Electronics. You left me your business card and asked me to call you regarding your dog."

Cam's voice audibly warmed. "Oh, hey! The tall guy, right? Hey, man, yeah, that's a bit of a weird situation for sure. Maybe we could meet-"

"I'm standing on your front porch right now with your dog, who was waiting for me in my driveway when I got home. Stunningly, nobody appears to be home, and yet your dog was left outdoors unattended. Can you please clarify this situation for me, because I'm terribly confused."

There was silence. It felt a little bit like victory.

Ben was finally starting to understand where those awful customers got off on this sort of thing.

"Uh, what? I'm sorry, that's – you're sure it's my dog?"

Ben practiced his deep breathing again, and forwarded a picture of Max sitting at his feet, smiling happily up at him with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.

He waited for a moment while Cam checked his texts.

"Oh, shit, that's him. I'm so sorry, how did he – you're _sure_ that nobody's home?"

"Clearly not, if you're not here." He just barely resisted tacking on an _as usual_.

"No, but – there's no car in the driveway or anything? Did you try knocking on the door? My roommate should be there, if Max is outside. Hold on a moment, let me text him, maybe he's got headphones in or something."

Ben frowned and squinted at his own phone in confusion. "You have a roommate?"

There were _two_ people living at this house and Ben had never seen evidence of _either_ of them before?

"Yeah." Cam sounded distracted. "Jake, he watches Max when I'm out of town. He's got to be home if Max is outside."

"He's not."

"Well hold on, give him a chance to answer my text-"

"Dude, he's _not_." Ben couldn't help huffing, rolling his eyes even though he knew Cam couldn't see it. "I'm telling you, this happens nearly every day. Max is outside, he sees me come by, he hops the fence to come on a run with me. I bring him home, nobody's there, I leave notes on both the door and on Max's collar and I put him back in the yard, and nothing ever changes. Other than that today Max saw fit to jump the fence all on his own and wait for me in my driveway. There's nobody home. The house is dark, there's no car in the driveway, nobody comes to the door. Unless your roommate is chronically unconscious and that's why he never answers the door, it sounds like he puts Max outside and leaves the house pretty much every day you're gone."

The silence was still feeling pretty satisfying.

"That _fucker_! He just told me he's at his girlfriend's place and that he put Max in his crate!"

"Clearly not."

"Well yes, clearly not, considering my dog is out wandering the neighborhood! Oh my God, where do you live? How far was he going? He could have been hit by a car!"

"Why do you think I've been leaving notes on your door for months now?"

" _Months?_ " Cam yelped. "I've never seen them! He must have been getting rid of them before I got home – oh my God, I'm going to kill him. He's dead, this is it, this is the last straw."

Ben only really felt spite once every few years, and so he decided he was going to be kind to himself and ride this out as far as it could go – even if he had a new target for his ire. It was fun to stir the pot once in a while.

"You know that photo at Herb's was taken a few months ago when I had to take Max home with me because he was left outside without water during a heat wave."

" _Oh my God_!" The sound that Cam made was something similar to a shriek, loud enough that it even caught Max's attention.

Ben felt a smile creeping across his face as he leaned back against the house's door, listening to Cam screaming, "Oh, he's done, he is fucking _done_! Oh my God, just, hold on, please? I'm on my way home right now, I'll be right there, I can't believe this – I'm so sorry, you've been way more than kind, but if you could just stay with Max for a few minutes I promise I'll be _right there_ and this is _never going to happen again_ , okay?"

Ben would have stayed with Max anyways, now that Max had developed a new form of delinquency which meant that he'd seek out friends if friends didn't come to him. But it was...nice, to hear how worried Cam was.

At least Max's owner cared, even if he was concerningly absentee.

He found himself agreeing. Ben was sitting on the porch, messing around on his phone while Max laid with his head in Ben's lap, when a pair of headlights attached to an expensive-looking car turned into the driveway.

The car was barely turned off when Cam was throwing himself out of the driver's seat and bolting for the porch, already spewing apologies.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry, I can't believe this happened-"

Max's tail thumped lazily and he stretched, lifting his head but not quite bothering to get up to greet his owner. That didn't seem to bother Cam, who crouched right down in front of Max to talk to him, ignoring that this coincidentally meant he was also talking to Ben's lap.

"Maxie, buddy, I'm so sorry he did this to you, I had no idea, he said he was home with you all the time. I'm so sorry he didn't take care of you, you must have been so lonely."

He was petting Max's head with both hands even as Max reclined back against Ben. Ben, for his part, held as still as possible every time that Cam's hands accidentally bumped up against his chest.

Apparently social niceties went by the wayside when his dog's welfare was at stake. Ben could appreciate that.

Cam looked up at Ben, and his eyes were even greener up close, even in the burgeoning darkness of the evening.

"I'm so sorry, I can't thank you enough for looking out for him. My roommate – that _asshole_ – he's a friend of a friend, and I gave him a cut-rate on rent _specifically_ so he could watch my dog while I'm out of town. He's more than broken that agreement so he's out of here as soon as I can have him collect his shit. God, I'm so angry right now, I can't believe this. Thank you for looking out for Max."

It wasn't a situation that Ben had quite prepared himself for, to have Max's owner in his personal space like this, thanking him profusely, the red flush of his face visible in the evening gloom, with Max panting happily between the two of them. It was perhaps too intimate, for a man to whom Ben had just been threatening grave bodily injury an hour ago.

"Uh, yeah," Ben said, feeling self-conscious for the first time since this had all started. He wanted to look away, but Cam was far too close for him to do that without making it obvious. "No problem. He...he's a really great dog. I've just been worried for him. He's so smart, but being smart and bored leads him to do things that could get him hurt."

"That won't be happening again," Cam said vehemently. "I'll stay with him myself. I'll just...cut back on my work trips."

He said it like he was trying to tell himself that it would work, and wasn't finding himself to be very convincing.

"Or maybe I'll put Max in a kennel when I'm away." Cam was frowning even more now, but his hands never stopped stroking over Max's head, brushing up against Ben every time in the process.

Ben would always say that he didn't know why he did it, but his history of threatening to steal Max spoke volumes.

"I could watch Max when you're away," he said.

Cam blinked owlishly, something Ben could only see because their faces were inches apart.

It made Ben want to squirm, something which he knew for a fact looked extremely perturbing on someone as large as him.

"It's just a suggestion," he added quickly. "Because Max already knows me and everything. And I'm home a lot whenever I'm not at work. And one of my bosses has even suggested that maybe Max could come to work with me, because my coworkers are all really excited about Max even though they've never met him. Because he's your dog."

He did avert his eyes then, staring resolutely down at Max's head, and therefore at Cam's hands on Max's head. It was weird, he knew it was too weird, you don't just offer to babysit a neighbor's dog on what sounded like an extremely regular basis when you've only just met the guy a few hours ago. Even if he really did think Max was a wonderful dog. Even if this would fulfill half of his particularly lonely fantasies of stealing Max and taking him home for good.

If Cam was out of town nearly as often as Ben thought, it would basically feel like splitting custody of Max. It was a winning situation for Ben, though he would never admit that to Cam. It was weird enough for Ben to even have made the offer.

That was why he never expected for Cam's face to flood with relief. "Oh my God, you'd do that? Really? Not that you have to feel obliged or anything, I could afford a kennel. It's just, I work in stocks, and that involves a lot of travel for networking with big clients, and I love having Max to come home to but it's not fair for him to be alone while I'm traveling all the time, and it would be an absolute lifesaver if someone like you were willing to keep him company – not that I wouldn't pay you, because I totally promise you I can pay you as much as you want, and I'll pay for all the supplies and everything. I know we just met and this is a weird thing to ask of you but Max really seems to be comfortable with you and I don't have to go away again until after Thanksgiving so you have some time to think about it but if you're open to it this would be amazing and I could never thank you enough."

Ben blinked. God, this guy talked a lot. He could see how Cam could be charismatic, though, if he moderated himself a little. It was probably a good quality to have when he was trying to sell himself to potential clients.

Cam also seemed to forget that it had actually been Ben who proposed the arrangement in the first place. At least it sounded a little bit less pathetic that way.

"It's no problem," Ben assured him. "Like I said, I really like Max a lot. It'd be a pleasure to look after him."

"That's amazing. You're amazing."

With a beaming smile, Cam stuck out his hand. "I don't think I ever really introduced myself. Cam Atkinson."

It was far too late in the game for that, but with the way Cam was smiling, Ben couldn't leave him hanging. He shook his hand.

"Ben Bishop."

"Well Ben," Cam said, still smiling, "This looks like the start of a beautiful arrangement."

Max sat up suddenly, breaking their handshake and clipping Cam in the jaw with the top of his head. Ben hadn't realized just how close their faces had grown until Cam was sprawling back on the porch steps, cursing and rubbing a hand over his mouth.

Ben did his best to muffle a chuckle as he scratched Max on the head.

"You don't plan on giving me trouble, do you?" he murmured.

Max whuffed softly and licked Ben's nose.

"He already likes you best," Cam grumbled, but when Ben looked at him, he was smiling.

Maybe this really could be a good idea.

Cam got a dog sitter, Ben got to kidnap his favorite dog without the theft charges, Max wasn't left alone all the time.

This could work out well for everyone.

And if he couldn't help but notice the way that Cam's eyes were sparkling in the twilight, well, that was just a bonus of the arrangement.

Things never quite worked out for Ben, after all. He may as well stop while he was ahead and be thankful for what he had.

He knew that he never got the guy in the end, so it wasn't even worth considering.

But Cam's smile made some small rebellious part of him want to hope.

~~~

The guys had understandably mixed feelings about Ben's new custody arrangement. Kuzya was, predictably, ecstatic, and immediately began talking about all of the presents he was going to bring Max when he came to visit him at Ben's house.

"Hold on," Ben had said, "Cam's not even going away until after the holiday."

Kuzya had nodded seriously. "Good, give us time to prepare for _Макс_."

He'd made a heavy point of pronouncing Max's name with a thicker than usual accent, and Ben was suddenly struck with a strong suspicion that Kuzya was going to spend a lot of time whispering to the dog in Russian.

Well. Whatever made him happy.

James made noises about Max coming to visit Herb's, "so that we can make sure he's not lonely during the day." Paul immediately tried to shut this down by citing health code violations, but James countered that he'd just let Max hang out in his apartment then. Ben assured him that Max could handle a normal workday at home, as long as he had adequate water and entertainment, but James still had that look in his eye like he was thinking deeply about something that he thought was terribly clever, which usually indicated that it was a bad idea.

Carey had been the only one to eye Ben skeptically.

"You sure about this?" He nudged their shoulders together, and usually Ben would have felt a thrill at this.

Now, it just made him feel sad.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

Carey frowned, shrugging slightly.

"I don't know," he said quietly, keeping his voice low enough that the others wouldn't notice in their bickering about the logistics of building a dog run around the back of the building. "You just met the guy, and as far as we know he's either oblivious or a flakey pet owner for this to have gone on so long under his nose. And he was kind of an ass yesterday, and he's gone all the time. You're sure you want to saddle yourself with that?"

Ben couldn't quite say why, but he prickled at that sort of judgment, even if Carey was voicing some of the same reservations that Ben himself had.

"It can't be all that different from a hockey player having a pet," he said, looking down at the pie crust he was rolling out because it was easier to sound nonchalant if he didn't have to look Carey in the eye. "Too much money for their own good, out of town all the time, no good way of checking up on if the person back home is taking care of their pet. Usually a bit of an ass."

Carey was markedly silent, but Ben still refused to look at him. If Paul could have whole conversations without ever once making eye contact, then Ben could, too.

Finally, Carey said, "Well, if Clune got a dog, he'd have Nealer to look after it."

Apparently they weren't addressing the fact that Carey knew quite well what it was like to date a hockey player.

"I guess I'll be his Nealer, then." Ben tried for lighthearted, but was fairly sure his words came out sounding too bitter for that.

Carey scoffed. "You just met the guy."

"Mhmm. And unlike Nealer, I'm not in talks to move in with the guy. He's offered to pay me to watch his dog, who I already know very well and like a lot. It's a business deal. That's all. Even if he is an ass, he's an ass with a nice dog who wants to give me a lot of money to spend time with his nice dog. Somehow I think I'll get by."

Carey was thankfully quiet again. Ben set about placing the crust in a clean pie tin.

"What's with you today?" Carey asked softly, startling him. "You're all...touchy."

Ben made the rookie mistake of looking back at Carey, like he hadn't spent two years under Paul's influence. Carey had his arms crossed over his chest, a troubled look on his face. It was the most expressively upset he'd ever seen Carey, outside of the panic attacks that they didn't talk about.

A week ago, Ben would have loved Carey being concerned for him like this. But a week ago, Carey hadn't unknowingly broken Ben's heart, so. There was that.

Right now, it just dug the knife a little bit deeper.

"Holidays," he said with a shrug. "Busy time, weird family shit, you know the drill."

He'd intended it as a deflection – mentions of their families were usually a time when the other one knew to drop the subject and not ask questions, because they would reveal things with time if they wanted to. Or at least, Carey used to know that, before Subban came back into his life, because now his eyebrows were pinched together and he looked increasingly bothered.

"Has your family called you?"

Ben had to swallow back a bark of laughter. His mother had been an only child and her parents had died before Ben had been born – shocker, cancer ran heavily in that family. His dad had a coolly cordial holidays-only relationship with his own brothers, and after Ben's mom died they'd stopped traveling to visit anybody for the holidays. He couldn't remember the last time he'd spoken to his uncles or cousins, and the last he'd heard his grandmother was in a nursing home specializing in memory care. Ben already hadn't seen her since he was twelve by the time he got that news, so he doubted she'd remember him at this point.

As for his dad, they hadn't spoken a word to each other since the day Ben said he'd been accepted into culinary school. He strongly doubted he'd be getting a phone call any time soon asking to get together for Thanksgiving.

Of course, Carey didn't know any of this, because they didn't used to ask about families. Nobody even knew that Ben's mom was dead. It was a funny thing, sometimes, to think that the people he saw as his closest friends didn't know something that Ben considered to be a defining feature in his existence.

His life irrevocably changed when his mom died. Ben was a different person because his mom had died.

At the same time, it had been nice to have nobody in Nashville know about his past. It had been so refreshing to get out of St. Louis, away from the same neighbors and classmates and hockey coaches who all knew him as Ben Whose Mom Died instead of Ben the baker or Ben the honors student or Ben the goalie. Ben had proudly worn a lot of hats in his life, but the Dead Mom hat was one he could never take off, no matter how desperately he wished he could.

Nashville meant he could be whoever he wanted to be, whoever he presented himself to be. He didn't keep his family a secret for the sake of mystery, but because he didn't think they should be relevant to defining who he was now. He didn't want to be Ben Whose Mom Died, but Ben, a baker who liked hockey and dogs and spending time with his friends, whose mom had died.

Their unspoken agreement not to discuss their pasts had let Ben choose who he wanted to be. Now Carey was changing the rules, and Ben wasn't ready for those changes. He wasn't sure he ever would be.

He shrugged, because he didn't feel like responding to Carey's question at all.

After a moment Carey frowned, maybe grimaced, and Ben got the impression that Carey recognized he might have overstepped his bounds.

"Right. Sorry." He squeezed Ben's shoulder, which in Carey-speak was the equivalent of sending apology flowers. Still wasn't an apology pie, but good enough.

Ben shrugged, keeping his eyes on his work. "Can you grab me that stack of pie tins?"

He didn't have to look up to know that Carey was smiling at him.

Maybe Paul was onto something.

~~~

Thanksgiving couldn't have come soon enough, even though Ben was anticipating it with a certain amount of dread. On the one hand, he could take a break from the pumpkin pies after this. On the other, he'd have to face a Thanksgiving with Carey's boyfriend, which was something he'd generally prefer to avoid at all costs.

It was better to just get it over with, right? Ripping off a band-aid and all of that. The more time he spent around Carey and PK together, the easier it would be for him to get used to them as a couple, and once his brain recognized them as a couple, he'd know that Carey was off-limits and get over his stupid crush.

Right.

If only it worked that easily in real life.

Ben arrived at Paul's early on Thanksgiving to help with the set-up. He'd made his mom's pumpkin pie again because it felt like a way of having her celebrate with him, even if all of his friends thought it was his own original recipe. Ben had also signed on to make the mashed potatoes, because after Nealer's Incident with the potato masher last year, he was relegated to setting the table and removing the cranberry sauce from the can while maintaining the perfect can shape. That last one was barely a chore given how much James genuinely enjoyed it.

The smell of roasting turkey greeted Ben when he arrived at Paul's apartment. Paul was in the kitchen setting out marshmallows on top of his sweet potato casserole. He'd told Ben that as the one from Wisconsin, it was his God-given right to have dibs on anything that claimed to be a casserole.

Ben was fine with that, and kept it to himself that he thought marshmallows had no place anywhere near a yam.

James appeared next to him and threw an arm around Ben's shoulders, pulling him in for a side-hug.

"Happy Fake-Thanksgiving, Ben!"

There was a warm feeling spreading through Ben's stomach, and he knew it was more than the promise of food.

It was a good day, overall. Rich was, hilariously, just as excited by the prospect of canned cranberry sauce as James, and the two of them put way too much time and effort into placing it on a serving dish.

"At least they have activities to enjoy as a couple," Paul had sighed.

Kuzya brought some sort of salad namely consisting of beets and pickled herring tossed with mayonnaise. James had looked both awed and mildly disgusted.

"It's like you fit all three of your favorite foods in one dish. I'm almost impressed."

Kuzya stared at him impassively. "My mama's recipe. You have to eat."

"Dude, there's literally a tag on the tray saying it's from a deli."

" _Mother Russia's recipe_."

The argument over the genesis of the herring salad – the name of which Kuzya said was "fish in a fuzzy jacket" or something bizarre like that – was engrossing enough that Ben had almost missed Carey slipping in, with PK Subban just a step behind him.

 _Almost_ missed it. But not enough to keep his heart from taking a leap up into Ben's throat so that he could choke on it.

Inoculation was harder than he'd thought.

What made it easier, or maybe more difficult, was that PK was a genuinely nice guy. He pulled Ben into one of those one-armed bro-hugs and greeted him like an old friend instead of the guy who sometimes had to make his coffee so that his estranged boyfriend could avoid him, prior to his big romantic reconciliation with said estranged boyfriend. He was funny, and charming, and he made half as many cracks about "Fake Thanksgiving" as Carey and James did. (Kuzya, to his credit, said that all North American holidays were fake, so at least _he_ was consistent.)

But the most bittersweet thing about PK Subban was that even a blind person could see how much he cared about Carey Price. It was there in the warmth of his eyes, the way he sat next to Carey with an arm over the back of his chair and watched him like he was a living miracle and PK was one of the few blessed enough to witness it. It was there in the way he brought Carey a second plate of food when they'd all retired to the couch for football, knowing without asking that he'd be hungry and picking out all of his favorite foods. It was there in the way he rubbed a thumb over Carey's shoulder as the evening wore on and Carey started to doze against him, eyes closed to contented slits like a well-satisfied cat.

PK and Carey had the type of well-worn, comfortable intimacy that most couples only dreamed of achieving, and years apart did nothing to quell that.

It warmed Ben's heart and made his insides writhe with jealousy.

There was no easy way to handle the dichotomy of being happy to see Carey so contented and at peace while at the same time taking that happiness like an ice pick to the chest because it wasn't with him. He wasn't even mad at Carey, Ben thought, as he sat in an armchair completely missing the game. He was only mad at himself, for getting his hopes up and thinking he'd ever have a chance, for being so pathetic and assuredly making an ass of himself to Carey.

It was nobody's fault but his own if he was anything other than happy for Carey. He'd done this to himself. He was the one who read too deeply into their friendship, who thought they were heading for something more. He couldn't blame Carey for that, and he certainly wouldn't begrudge him his current happiness.

But it still sucked. It sucked, and it hurt more than Ben could say.

He'd never been that close with anyone, ever, at least not since his mom died. He and his dad had been like two awkward planetary bodies, trapped in the same space but orbiting each other at a distance due to their gravities forcing them apart. Those planetary bodies had imploded, at the end. He had no relationship with the rest of his extended family. He carried no friends with him from childhood, and had only had acquaintances in culinary school.

Herb's Electronics was the first place where he felt like he was able to really connect with people, but he was still at arm's length. Maybe he did it to himself, not exposing his past, but he didn't think his lack of disclosure should play a role in his ability to form new relationships. He thought of them as the best friends he'd ever had, the closest thing he had to family.

He'd been dumb enough to assume there was no reason that they shouldn't feel the same. He was forgetting, of course, that they all had their own stories, pasts with family and friends they might still be close to, stories that they didn't feel like sharing with Ben. They all had existences outside of the shop, connections to the rest of the world.

And Ben? Ben only had Herb's. And he'd always been comforted by the fact that Carey was in the same boat, that Carey could understand why their little motley family was so important to him.

But now, now Carey had PK, and he was reconnecting with his family, and maybe Carey was still a part of their little Herb's family but he didn't _need_ them anymore. He had other connections, other people to fall back on if something went wrong.

Ben only had Herb's, and he was starting to wonder how long he could even have that.

A corn chip bounced off his shirt and landed in his lap. When Ben looked up, Paul was squinting sideways at him from the next chair over.

"You okay?" he asked in a low voice.

Ben forced a smile and shrugged.

"Yeah, of course. Just a little tired out. Think I might head home early, my food coma's getting to me."

Paul frowned, scratching a hand through his stubble. "It's not even half-time yet."

Of the group of them, he and Ben were the biggest football fans by far. It came with the territory of being Americans, and Thanksgiving football was one of the greatest American pastimes.

And yet, Ben had barely paid attention to the game to the point where he honestly had no clue what the score was or who was winning, and he knew all too well about what it felt like to have his heart chewed up and spit out repeatedly for hours. He could catch a football game again next week, when he didn't have to stare at the ever-growing evidence of Carey and PK's perfect happy relationship.

"Yeah, I know. I'm just not feeling up to it right now. I'm gonna head out."

He could see that Paul wanted to argue, because Paul was nothing if not observant and Ben had the feeling that he was being pretty obvious right now, but Paul let it go just the same.

"Well, have a good night, then. Call me in the morning if you don't feel well enough to come in."

"Yeah, of course."

Everyone made their goodbyes, James taking a dramatic lunge to hug Ben's ankle from where he was sitting propped up on the floor. Ben was just collecting up his serving dishes from the kitchen on his way out when Carey caught him.

"You're leaving already?"

"Uh, yeah." Ben shrugged. "I'll see you tomorrow."

He was stopped by Carey stepping in front of him. Carey's eyes were intense, and Ben struggled not to squirm under their stare.

"You're absolutely sure you're okay? You don't need any help or anything?"

He didn't specify what he'd meant, but Ben didn't want to know. He just nodded and insisted that he was doing well.

"Yeah, man, just tired. You know how crazy work gets this time of year. Think I'm just crashing a little hard today, that's all. I'll be fine with some sleep."

The thing about Carey was that he wasn't incredibly demonstrative in his friendships, meaning he wasn't exactly one to voice his concerns as anything more than a passing comment, and he absolutely never pushed the matter when somebody told him they were fine.

That was why it was odd for Carey to look troubled, or as troubled as Carey ever looked, scowling with his eyes narrowed like he knew Ben had a secret and he was trying to suss it out.

Well, he should be used to it by now, Ben thought bitterly. It had been pretty well established that just about everything about Ben was a secret.

He couldn't get that thought out of his head on the drive home. It wasn't that he'd woken up one morning and decided that his goal in life was to remain mysterious and enigmatic, a man with no name and no past. He'd like to think of himself as a pretty open and friendly guy.

There were simply parts of Ben's life that weren't worth sharing. Plenty of people had lived Ben's story, had gone through much worse, and the more salacious parts...those were the things that had defined Ben's childhood, the parts of his identity that he'd worked so hard to strip away when he'd left St. Louis.

Birth families were overrated, anyways. If someone was born into a loving family that supported them unconditionally, no matter who they were or what they dreamed, then more power to them. But so often it didn't work out like that.

Ben had that happy picture perfect family, when he was younger. Or at least it had seemed that way. His mom had been the sun around which Ben and his father revolved, the nucleus of the family. She was bright and cheerful and compassionate, and she made you believe that you could make a difference, that you could be a better person.

Maybe she'd had her faults, but at eight years old, it was hard for any child to find something wrong with their mother. She'd been his rock, his protector, his partner in crime. When she'd died, those feelings had crystallized, frozen in time, memorialized in tawny amber, perfect and untouchable.

Ben might have questioned his views of his mother as he got older, if his father hadn't mourned the same way. It was like they were both adrift without her. The diagnosis had been so fast – pancreatic cancer, stage four, already metastasized to her lungs. She had died within months. Nobody had seen it coming. There had been barely any time to prepare, to brace themselves.

And then she was gone, and Ben and his father had mutually decided to put her up on a pedestal and never, ever think about taking her down.

It was probably the last thing they'd ever agreed on.

Ben couldn't remember being close to his father, before his mother died, but he didn't think they were _not_ close, either. He was sure he'd preferred his mother, as children often do when one parent is at home more than the other, but he was fairly certain he'd had a good deal of hero worship for his father, too, at one point. His father was a police officer – what child wouldn't be proud of that?

But it had been like he and Ben didn't know what to do with each other, without his mother there to mediate. They were like puzzle pieces that would never fit together correctly, all of their jagged and sharp edges rubbing against each other. Ben's father didn't know what to do with a grieving child, and Ben hadn't known what to do with a grieving father. They would go days with barely a word to each other.

His mother's house that she kept impeccably neat, always bright and warm and scented with cinnamon and chocolate and vanilla, became a tomb, dark and closed and dusty.

The only place where either of them found refuge was in hockey.

Ben's father had put him in hockey before he'd even entered kindergarten. It was probably the closest thing they'd ever had to a bonding experience. He may not have had much time to practice with Ben himself, but he'd always been there to take Ben to practice, drive him to travel games, help him buy new equipment.

When Ben's mom died, his father treated baking like a mockery of her life, but he never once considered taking Ben out of hockey.

Hockey was Ben's only connection to a normal life, after that. When his home life became unbearable and school was full of whispers and sidelong glances, hockey was the only place where he got to still be Ben, the goalie.

And when he was wrapped up in pads and gloves, a net at his back and a mask over his face, that was when he felt a little bit like himself again. When he was playing hockey, he wasn't the kid with the dead mom, he was the goaltender, and he could only be judged by how well he played.

Ben had been a pretty damn good goaltender. He was fairly sure it was the only thing his dad had still liked about him, at the end.

They hadn't spoken in years, not that you could really call what they'd been doing before Ben moved away _speaking_. His father had told Ben that he'd wanted him to get the fuck out, and he'd meant it. The day after he took his last exam, Ben was in his car driving to Tennessee. He hadn't even stuck around for his formal graduation. He was sure his father wouldn't have gone, even if he had.

He'd been eighteen, then. His father hadn't ever tried to contact him since.

Ben was smart enough to connect the dots and guess that his feelings probably hadn't changed at all and likely never would.

And that was okay. Ben had a new life for himself now. He'd made himself a new family, even if it was worth more to him than it was to anyone else. It wasn't that he wanted to forget where he'd come from, but that he considered that chapter of his life closed and in the past, and wanted to focus on building a new future with people who actually chose to be with him instead of just being obligated by blood.

That's what he was doing, he reminded himself firmly as he pulled into his driveway. There may be some hiccups along the way, but he still had a family. He'd still made a new life, completely disparate from his old one. He was doing well for himself.

He tried to remind himself of that as he stared at his house in front of him, cold and dark and empty until Ben breathed a semblance of life into it again.

Maybe he didn't have to go home quite yet.

Later, Ben would try to tell himself that it was just habit that took him walking past Max's house – Cam's house. Max and Cam's house, he supposed. He was only walking that way because it was the route he always took on his morning jogs. He wasn't actually looking for either of them to be outside. Why would they be, on Thanksgiving evening? Ben knew fully well that Cam's parents were coming to visit – that's the reason Cam was sure he would be in town for a few days.

Perhaps some part of him just wanted a glimpse in on that, a warm, normal Thanksgiving with parents who were alive and wanted to see you.

God, maybe he wasn't as well-adjusted as he'd like to think.

Maybe Cam wasn't either, because he was sitting on the steps to his house, bathed in the yellow glow of the porch light, hunched over his phone. Max was splayed over his lap, mirroring his pose with Ben just a few days ago.

It was Max who perked up as Ben walked by, his tail thumping against the porch in excitement. Ben could hear Cam mutter, "What's up, buddy?"

Then he followed Max's gaze to Ben, and he visibly perked up too.

"Oh, hey, man! How are you?"

If Ben had felt pathetic enough to maybe possibly be trolling past Cam's house this time of night, he felt even worse being noticed doing it. He felt pinned there on the sidewalk, raising a hand in an awkward wave.

"Uh, hi. I'm good. Just out for a walk."

Cam nodded quickly, still smiling. Ben could see his white teeth even from the sidewalk.

"Needed a few minutes to breathe? Yeah, man, me too. I love getting to see my parents but the whole family is a bit much. Me and Max needed a time out. You too?"

This was one of those moments that Ben used to prove to himself that he wasn't intentionally _trying_ to keep secrets, because anyone who wanted to keep a secret would have just taken the out that Cam was giving him and agreed. But Ben was the most honest enigmatic person he knew, and so he said, "Uh, no, I don't have anyone visiting or anything. Just got back from my friend's place, needed some air."

If Cam thought anything about that was strange, he didn't show it.

"I get that. Hey, come join us." He patted the porch on his right, the side not taken up by Max. Max, for his part, nosed at Cam's hand until he started rubbing behind his ears again.

Ben grimaced, glad that his face wasn't too visible in the darkening evening. "Oh, no, I couldn't possibly intrude like that-"

Cam rolled his eyes. "Intrude on what, me hiding from my parents by playing Candy Crush with my dog? It's fine, come here. I could use some company that doesn't want to talk to me about the economy, or about what type of coffee I should have bought."

He grimaced. "Is that rude of me to say, considering you work at a coffee shop?"

Ben didn't give them permission to move, but his feet were carrying him closer to the porch. The next thing he knew he was sitting next to Cam on the top step, his legs stretched out in front of him making their height difference visible even while seated. He also didn't remember choosing to smile, but here he was, flashing Cam a small smile and reaching over to offer Max his hand.

"I'm a baker anyways, so I don't really care what people have to say about coffee." Max licked at Ben's hand, maneuvering it around his head until Ben was scratching his neck. "I've been informed that I don't have a very discerning taste in coffee anyways."

Cam clutched at a set of pearls he didn't have and gasped loudly enough for Max to give him an offended look for startling him. "Are you suggesting that you couldn't tell the difference between handpicked artisanal organic certified vegan coffee beans carried in a silk pouch by camels all the way from Kenya and-" He lowered his voice dramatically. "- _McDonald's coffee?_ "

There was a glimmer in his eyes that was visible even in the porch light, mischievous and bright. It lit his whole face, and Ben felt his own face warm just looking at it.

"No, I guess not," he said. "How would the camels travel across the ocean?"

Cam shrugged and waved a hand. "First class airline seats, probably. Only the best, when your coffee costs thirty dollars a pound."

If Ben had been drinking coffee, he would have choked on it. "Is that...is that what you normally drink?"

"Oh my God, no," Cam laughed. He had a nice laugh, one that made Ben's stomach feel fluttery. "No, but that's the equivalent to what my parents expected me to have. They were very disappointed in my Maxwell House original blend. They seem to think that my level of income means that I should be spending money accordingly. They're already disappointed with my _small, shabby house_."

The way he said it made it clear that this was an ongoing argument that Cam didn't appreciate rehashing.

Ben just bit his lip and tried not to think too hard about how much he was paying in a mortgage, and what a deal he'd gotten on his house because the last tenant had died in it and hadn't been found for a few days, which had really put a pall on the buyers' market for it.

He also tried to avoid thinking about how much money Cam must be making for a thirty dollar bag of coffee to seem like a proportionately reasonable purchase in his parents' eyes.

Instead, he said, "Your house seems pretty nice, from the outside at least."

Cam smiled and bumped shoulders with Ben, which was really more like bumping his shoulder above Ben's elbow. "Thanks, I'd like to think so. They're just...I know they want what's best for me, but they want me to spend my money on all of the things that _they_ spent money on at my age, and I just have different priorities than them, you know?"

Ben knew all about having different priorities than his parents, but he would bet money that Cam had never come to physical blows over it before. His parents seemed more the type to give a speech about being disappointed and confiscate the keys to the Lexus for a few days than to slam their kid up against the wall and yell at him that they didn't spend all this time and money raising him just for him to be a pansy.

That was one of those pieces of himself that Ben never felt was worth sharing. Nobody ever wanted to hear about something like that. Either it was too ghastly for public consumption, or it was such a stereotypical story that it didn't bear repeating.

Regardless, Ben would just as soon keep it to himself.

He nodded, though, because that's what Cam had been waiting for. Cam heaved a sigh, carding his hands through Max's fur, the backs of his fingers brushing against Ben's as he did.

"I love them, and I know they love me, but sometimes I just need a break. There's a reason I moved away from Connecticut."

Then he frowned.

"Well. I also moved for work, because my firm sent me down here last year. And before that I was working in Columbus, and before that I moved to Boston for college, and before _that_ I went to boarding school so I could play hockey, so now that I think about it I've probably spent like half my life trying to limit how much direct contact I have with my parents. Unintentionally, of course. Except maybe not. Oh man, maybe it was my subconscious?"

Cam looked honestly concerned, and maybe like he'd spooked himself a little bit. It sounded like the sort of thing that James would say, except when James went off on one of his tangents Ben wasn't usually tempted to bump shoulders with him and stare at his face for way too long.

He swallowed harshly. "So, uh. You played hockey?"

It wasn't that Cam's face every really lost its brightness in the first place, but he perked up as if someone had just found the dimmer switch and jacked it up to eleven. "Oh, man, yeah! I was a forward! I was always a little guy, of course-" He gestured down at himself. "-so I was good at scoring goals and being a pain in the ass. Yeah, I played from when I was a little kid all through college – I actually played for Boston College!"

Ben shouldn't have been surprised, at this point, that everyone who turned up in Nashville seemed to have been a hockey player in a past life. It felt like some sort of sign, calling them all together.

Except none of his friends even knew that he'd ever played hockey, other than Carey. It felt like it would just lead to too many questions.

"I bet you'd have been a good hockey player," Cam said, nudging Ben's shoulder right back. He didn't seem to need much input to keep on talking. "A guy your size, you'd have crushed 'em."

The words were out of Ben's mouth before he could stuff them back down, like he'd suddenly realized he just had to tell someone else about his hockey days, just so all of his secrets weren't being kept by Carey.

"Goalie, actually," he said, looking down at Max, whose eyes were drooping sleepily.

They were pressed close together enough for Ben to feel when Cam physically startled.

"Seriously? You know what, I could see it. You'd just block up the whole net, the other team wouldn't even have a chance. Where'd you play?"

He was smiling at Ben so openly, waiting expectantly for Ben to name a program as recognizable as Boston College's. Ben got the distinct impression that even without intending it, Cam may not have had a very good understanding of lives that weren't like his own: glossy magazine-perfect family, the type of success and wealth that put the _upper_ in upper middle class, the biggest issue with your parents being that they nagged you to flaunt your wealth more and bought you expensive espresso machines that broke down within months.

Cam seemed like a really, really nice guy, happy and friendly and only unintentionally rude when he was so harried and flustered that he forgot himself in his running around. Ben didn't want to be the sort of guy who rained on that parade by sharing his life's story, one long trail of mediocre disappointments after another.

Ben shrugged and kept his eyes on Max. "Oh, I haven't played since high school.'

He left it at that.

Cam was still far too intrigued for Ben's liking. Apparently his urge to disclose information about himself was swiftly passing.

"Were you any good?"

Feeling his cheeks starting to warm and blessing the cover of dim porch light, Ben could only shrug again. "I was okay. It was high school, nothing serious."

Colleges had scouted him once or twice, but nothing ever came of it, no offers or scholarships. His dad was always so sure that Ben must have intentionally sabotaged his interviews with scouts so that he had an excuse not to keep playing hockey. He'd never believed that maybe Ben just wasn't quite good enough.

He had expected Cam to let it go after such a lackluster response, but instead he attempted to elbow Ben in the ribs, hitting him more in the vicinity of his kidneys.

"Hey, be proud of your weird goalie heritage, it takes a special kind of guy to volunteer to be hit with objects moving over seventy miles an hour, for fun."

There was something about the way that Cam said the word _special_ that made it feel like maybe he really wasn't just talking about hockey.

Ben was back to staring at him, getting a little too caught up there in the dim trying to figure out exactly what shade of green his eyes were, when the door behind them suddenly opened with a creak.

"Cam, you really should get this looked at, it's pretty loud." A short woman was frowning at the door like it was highly concerning and a sure sign that the house would be momentarily collapsing. Cam's mother, most likely.

And just like her son, she didn't give anyone a chance to respond when she caught sight of them sitting together, Max strewn over their laps, fast asleep.

"Oh, who's this?" she asked, her voice warming by degrees.

Cam lit up again like he'd somehow received a compliment. The way his mom was smiling, Ben would think that maybe he had, if he hadn't known the context.

"This is my friend Ben, he lives nearby. He's going to be looking after Max from now on when I'm out of town."

It took Ben a few seconds for the words to finish percolating in his brain – _this is my friend Ben._ Cam must have had rather low standards for friendship, seeing as they barely knew each other, but – then again. He'd known Carey for two years and it seemed like they hardly knew each other anymore. Hell, Cam knew that Ben had played hockey, he already knew more about him than three of the people Ben considered family.

He and Cam may as well be friends, especially if they were going to share custody of a dog.

"That's wonderful!" She was just as easily pleased as Cam too, coming over to offer Ben her hand to shake. It was an awkward angle, but luckily his arms were long enough not to make it too weird. "That old roommate of Cam's was just awful, and I know that Max never did like doggy day care – he's far too much of a free spirit, you know. I'm so happy Cam has a friend here in Nashville to help him out."

"Of course," Ben said, because it sounded like the right thing to say. "He's a great dog, I care about him a lot."

"That's so kind of you." She looked like she meant it, too. Just like her son, it didn't seem like she knew how to be anything but a little too genuine. "Would you like to come inside? I was just coming out here to tell Cam that dessert is ready. I made my _famous_ pumpkin pie."

She actually winked, overly exaggerated like it took a lot of focus and all the more charming for it. Maybe she had expensive tastes and was a little out of touch with reality, but Ben couldn't help but like her.

Cam looked mildly scandalized.

" _Mom_ ," he hissed, "Ben is a _professional baker_ , he probably already made his own pie today, he doesn't want to eat yours too."

If he hadn't noticed it before, it was more than evident now that Cam was perhaps a little lacking in social graces. He was lucky he was cute.

Cam's mother must have been used to his bullshit because she didn't even seem bothered. "There's no such thing as too much pie," she said primly, "Did you make a pie for today, Ben?"

He tried to think of the strange turn events that had brought him to this place, sitting on his absentee neighbor's porch, pressed up against him petting his dog while being interrogated by his mother about pies.

"I did. Pumpkin pie, my mother's recipe."

Nobody knew that it was his mom's recipe. He didn't know why he felt compelled to say it.

For as much as she pried, he had to be thankful that Cam's mother didn't press him for details about exactly where his mother was and why Ben wasn't spending the holiday with her.

"We'll have to compare notes," she said with a warm smile. She reached out and patted him on the shoulder. He got the feeling she'd have been patting his hand if she could reach it. "You should come inside and try some, ignore my son's rude behavior."

"I'm not being rude." Cam scowled, nose wrinkled in distaste.

"Don't you start with me, Cameron."

"I really should be going," Ben interrupted. "I have to work in the morning, I should be getting to bed early."

He really could have afforded to stay. He could have gone in and had a piece of pie, stayed for a cup of coffee. He could have spent a few minutes basking in the warmth of Cam's bright, chipper family, complete with a dog who loved him and no signs of Carey and his new/old boyfriend dragging Ben down.

He could have, but it would have been too intimate, too close. Too much of a sign of all of the things he hadn't had since he was a kid, if he'd ever had them at all. Sometimes, he thought that he had tinged all of those memories of his mother with the warm sepia glow of nostalgia and childhood love, unable to see the blemishes and scars, because there was no way that his mother would have been happily married to the man his father became. Maybe he had become that way because Ben's mother died, or maybe he was always that way, but had buried it enough with his wife around that Ben hadn't noticed it until she was gone.

Or maybe life hadn't been as rosy and sweet as his mother had always led him to believe.

Ben would never have the answer to that, but he still didn't want to have a reminder of what he'd lost dragged in front of him, not after he'd already spent a day doing that by hanging around Carey and PK.

Both were things that Ben had thought he'd lost, but maybe that he'd never had from the start. Really, he should have known better by now.

"Are you sure you can't join us?" Cam's mother looked disappointed.

Ben jumped when Cam's hand moved from stroking Max's head to resting on Ben's knee.

"I was just teasing," he said lowly, "It'd really be awesome if you stayed."

He looked like he meant it too – they both did, still so painfully sincere, and maybe that was why Ben couldn't stay. He already felt too close here, too open. Too vulnerable. For as much as he kept saying that he wanted to let others know him, the prospect of actually doing so was terrifying.

Ben had never really been a hero.

"No, I really should get going. Thank you both for the offer though. Maybe some other time."

He couldn't imagine what other time he'd join Cam and his family for a major holiday, but it wasn't really worth pursuing.

Ben told himself that it was years of tending goal and getting older that made it feel so difficult to stand up, and not because he didn't want to leave, didn't want to step away from the warm glow of the porch light, from the two short people staring at him sadly, from the dog who whined when he was disturbed and looked to Ben to come back and make him comfortable again.

He took a step backwards, off of the porch.

"I'll see you around, Cam. It was nice meeting you, ma'am."

Cam's mother seemed to shake herself first. "It's Laura to you, young man."

Ben smiled. "Laura, then."

When Cam didn't say anything, Ben took it as a sign to start making his retreat. He gave one final wave and shoved his hands in his pockets.

He'd only made it as far as the sidewalk when he heard steps behind him, and then Cam was there, clapping a hand on his shoulder, Max right at his feet, prancing around the two of them. Ben could feel the warmth of Cam's hand seeping through his jacket.

"Let me walk you home," Cam said breathlessly, his eyes glinting in the light.

Ben couldn't help laughing a little. "I live less than a minute away."

"Well good, I'm too tired out for real exercise right now anyways."

He took his hand off of Ben's shoulder. Ben would have mourned the loss, except that for the entirety of the thirty second journey back to Ben's house, Cam walked pressed right up to Ben's side, Max faithfully leading the way.

There were worse ways to end a holiday.

~~~

Things started to return to...well, not normal, but this new type of normal that Ben was slowly eking out for himself. He went to work, the same as usual, and for once in his life he blessed the holiday rush that kept him so busy prepping Christmas cookies for the freezer that he couldn't spend a moment at work dwelling on his personal life, or lack thereof.

He still went to lunch with Carey more often than not, and it still stung every time Carey bewilderedly detailed the house that PK had bought for him and filled with things he'd thought Carey would like, even when Carey hadn't spoken to him for years. It had quickly become clear that PK Subban played the long game, and Ben had never stood a chance.

That didn't mean Ben didn't still look away, every time PK came to pick Carey up from Herb's.

It was getting better, though.

The Wednesday after Thanksgiving, Max had his first "sleepover" at Ben's house. Cam had some sort of business trip down in Tampa and wouldn't be back until late Friday evening.

"I told him it's a sleepover so he'd be excited about it," Cam had hissed when he dropped Max off in the morning. He looked furtively at Max as if Max might hear his secrets and feel betrayed.

Seeing as Max was excited to see Ben on a good day, sleepover or not, that wasn't really likely to happen.

There was something so satisfying to see Max prance right into Ben's house like he owned the place and hop up on the couch, right where he had when Ben took his picture over the summer. He took a picture again, sending it to the boys. Kuzya was supposed to be at class this time of morning, but clearly that wasn't going to stop him from texting ardent messages in Russian which were, evidently, addressed to Max.

Ben thought nothing of it as he got Max settled in his house. He set up the crate that Cam had brought with him, claiming that if Max was going to be spending a lot of time at Ben's, he needed a "den" at Ben's house too. He'd refused to take any money for it, saying that if it was going to be used to house his dog there was no reason for Ben to be paying for it. Ben couldn't really argue that point, but there was still something about it that made his hands itch, watching Cam cart in bags of expensive grain-free dog food and cutesy ceramic bowls and a truly stunning amount of dog toys.

"Those are all new?"

"Some." Cam shrugged. "Some of them I brought from home so he'd have something familiar. He has lots, so it's cool if he keeps them here."

He paused, starting to look a little chagrined. "I mean, if it's okay if he keeps them here. When he's not staying with you I could take them back? Or you could throw them in his crate, or-"

Ben decided to take mercy on him. "It's fine, I don't mind."

Besides, it might be fun to try to teach Max how to put his toys away.

The crate was set up in Ben's living room, right next to the couch that Max seemed set on claiming for his own. It had a brand new dog bed lining the floor inside, and Cam had added in a blanket from home that he said was one of Max's favorites, "so this way it smells like him and he'll be comfy there."

Considering Ben had spent months thinking up all of the things he'd like to yell at Cam about how he neglected his dog, it was actually kind of heartwarming to see how much he cared.

The extra set-up time meant that Ben didn't get to go on his run that morning, so he put Max out in the yard with strict instructions not to make any jailbreaks in the time it took Ben to finish getting ready.

Maybe his stern warnings worked, or maybe Max was entertained enough exploring a new area that he didn't see reason to escape just yet, but Max was thankfully still in the yard when Ben went to bring him inside. He didn't even put up a fuss about going in the crate, though he did try to lick Ben's hands through the grates as Ben set the latch.

It was cute enough that he gave Max a treat anyways, telling himself that this definitely wouldn't become a daily occurrence.

(He also had the willpower of a limp noodle, and Max seemed to know that.)

Ben knew Max would be okay while he was at work, but he still worried about him throughout the day.

"You're like a new parent who just dropped their kid off at daycare for the first time," Paul grumbled, hunched over a tray of gingerbread men with a truly monstrous bag of white icing.

"Would you know a lot about that?"

Paul snorted. "Did I not basically raise James?"

It was still an immense relief when he got home that afternoon to find Max safe and sound in his crate, chewing on a Kong toy. He jumped right up when Ben entered the room, wiggling excitedly and prancing in place.

"Hold on, I'm coming for you," Ben tutted, but he was smiling.

It was nice to come home to someone who was always happy to see you.

He took Max out for a walk, to make up for how long he was in the crate. Even though he knew Max would most likely stay with him, Ben clipped a leash to his collar, just to be safe.

It wasn't even that surprising when Max tried to lead them back to Cam's house, sniffing with interest along the fence line that bordered the sidewalk.

"Yes, that's your yard," Ben sighed, tugging gently at Max's leash. "C'mon, Cam's not here right now. You're sleeping over at my house tonight, remember?"

Max made a grumbling noise and let himself be pulled away, but not without putting up a token protest just to make Ben have to struggle that little bit extra.

After their walk, Ben fed Max his dinner and then started making his own. It was pretty dark out by the time he heard a knock on the door, and it was pretty late for solicitors, even if it was technically before seven.

But Max got excited and went running to see who it was, so Ben had to follow after him.

He was expecting to tell whoever was at the door a hearty "no, thank you" to whatever they wanted, but he didn't get a chance to do that because they'd already let themselves in.

It took a few seconds for his brain to compute that yes, that was Kuzy kneeling on the floor hugging Max like his life depended on it and cooing in Russian, and no, Ben had not actually let him in. In fact, Ben was fairly sure none of his coworkers even knew where he lived, outside of his employee records.

"Sorry not sorry, I hear _мой щенок и я не могу сопротивляться, нет, как я мог сопротивляться этому лицу?_ "

The worst thing was that Ben knew full well that Kuzya didn't suddenly forget English in his excitement over the dog, or somehow forget that Ben didn't understand him. Kuzya had been saying for months that it was important for Max to start learning Russian "so we can talk to each other." Clearly he wasn't going to let a little inconvenience like Ben's door stop him.

He should have locked it.

"Uh, how'd you know where I live?"

Kuzya didn't even look up from burying his face in Max's fur. "Nealer tells me. He wants come see _Макс_ too, but I say no, today is my day. _какой красивый щенок, Максим!_ "

"You guys worked out _days_?"

The look Kuzy shot him was as if he was particularly dumb and Kuzy pitied him for it.

"Yes, did not want to overwhelm our best friend, _ты мой лучший друг Максим? Да, это ты!_ "

It wasn't even really worth the effort of arguing, to be honest.

Besides. Maybe it would be kind of nice, to have dinner company for once.

It wasn't just the once. Apparently his coworkers really had decided that they would meet Max in shifts, because Thursday night found James and Paul on his doorstep. At least Paul had the good grace to look guilty for showing up unannounced, handing over a casserole like a peace offering.

"It was James's idea," he said, as if that explained everything. In a way it sort of did.

James was already off communing with Max, lying on the floor on his stomach so that they were nearly nose-to-nose.

"This is a good dog you have here, Ben."

"He's not my dog," Ben said.

"He's in your house, isn't he?"

Ben decided to let it go, lest James get any ideas.

He crossed his arms and sighed, leaning against the kitchen counter.

"Should I be expecting Carey to show up sometime too?" he asked in a low tone. He wasn't quite sure which response he wanted.

Paul leaned next to him, staring straight out at James and Max. "No, I don't think he's in on this. There's some sort of team thing tomorrow night that he's invited to, I know James is going."

And Ben had never thought of that, that Carey was technically a WAG now. Or whatever non-gendered term there was for it. A hockey spouse, maybe, even if they weren't married.

The thought made something in him shudder miserably, even while the rest of him was cracking up at the prospect of "SCarey" Price, Nashville's surliest barista, planning charity galas and wearing a bedazzled jean jacket with Subban's name on it for the playoffs.

He knew for a fact he didn't speak out loud, but Paul must have followed the same line of thought.

"Can't you just imagine those two in matching playoff outfits?"

"Gotta represent your man," Ben said, loud enough for James to pick up on what they were talking about. James, who was a sore winner and a sore loser and generally just sore all around, predictably started complaining that he could wear whatever he wanted with whoever's name on it that he wanted, and who were they to judge him, and did they think it had to be a denim jacket because he would do it but he didn't want to perpetuate stereotypes about the Canadian tuxedo-

Max rolled around on the floor and groaned, kicking his legs up in the air and clearly over James's drama.

Ben smiled and shook his head.

Some things still sucked, but life was feeling easier by the minute.

~~~

Ben woke up Friday morning to a warm, softly snoring furry body tucked up under his chin. He had decided to trust Max enough not to crate him overnight. They'd started the evening with Max at the foot of the bed, but he'd clearly moved in the night, seeing as he was now sharing the edge of Ben's pillow.

One of Max's paws was twitching in his sleep; Ben grabbed it and held it in his hand, admiring how soft the pads were. That was enough to wake Max up, and he quickly rolled over so that he could start licking over Ben's face.

"Oh, man." Ben tried to keep his mouth shut as he laughed, moving his hands up to take the brunt of Max's licking. "I love you too but I'm not sure that's what I need first thing in the morning."

It felt so natural to blend Max into his morning routine. He'd already been a part of it, of course, but now Ben let Max into the yard while he got dressed. Then they went on their customary morning jog – with Max on a leash this time – and when they got back Ben took a shower and put on his clothes for work. They had breakfast together, Ben eating scrambled eggs and Max eating that expensive salmon-flavored dog food that Cam had brought which smelled like a wharf.

"Your breakfast is gonna make me lose mine, buddy," he told Max. Max didn't even pause to look up from his bowl.

After breakfast he put Max in his crate with some of his many, many toys. "You be good, Maxie. Your dad's coming to pick you up tonight."

Max licked his fingers through the grate.

It was dumb, but he spent the whole day with a cloud hanging over his head, thinking about how Max was going home that evening and then Ben would be alone again in his too-empty house. It had been really nice to have someone there to keep him company, if only for a little bit.

"You could just get your own dog, you know," Carey said over lunch.

After a moment Ben just smiled and shrugged and looked down at his sandwich. It wasn't worth trying to explain that it wouldn't be the same.

Cam had texted him his flight details, so Ben was able to track it online. It landed on time, and Cam had told him in one of his rambles that he usually only brought a carry-on bag for short trips, so he wouldn't have to deal with luggage retrieval. He should be arriving soon.

"Your dad's on his way, buddy," he told Max, stroking a hand over his head. Max was laying on the couch with him, his head over Ben's lap while Ben half-heartedly watched someone on the Food Network make something pretentious. Max didn't respond, but it was nice having someone other than himself to talk to.

The program hadn't even finished yet when he heard a car pull into his driveway. Max must have been familiar with the sound of Cam's car because he vaulted himself off of the couch with a scrabble of paws and sharp nails digging into Ben's legs. He hit the floor in a clatter and raced for the door, nearly wiping out on the linoleum in the kitchen.

Ben followed at a more sedate pace, but maybe he shouldn't have bothered getting up at all, seeing as everyone apparently thought it was entirely appropriate to just let themselves into Ben's house uninvited.

Cam was already kneeling on the floor with Max thrashing around against him unable to decide if he wanted to jump on Cam or roll over to have his stomach rubbed.

"There's my boy!" he cooed. He glanced up and locked eyes with Ben, and something shifted in his smile, sliding into something akin to a smirk, except entirely too genuine.

"And there's my other boy."

Thank goodness Ben was standing still at that point because otherwise he probably would have tripped over his own feet. As it was he could feel that same old familiar blush crawling up his ears. He could just imagine the telltale red blotches all over his neck and shoulders.

Cam stood up, Max grumbling in protest and wriggling around his feet. He was still smiling as he reached out a hand to grab Ben and pull him into a one-armed bro hug, complete with back-slapping. He was either unaware or uncaring that the height difference had his nose mashed awkwardly against Ben's shoulder.

"Thanks, bro, seriously, you're such a lifesaver."

The butterflies in Ben's stomach promptly dropped dead.

This scenario was far more fitting of a guy like Ben.

"Oh, yeah. Definitely, no problem."

It shouldn't be that hard to hustle Cam out the door. The time had drifted past ten o'clock, and Ben still had to work in the morning even if Saturday was a day off for Cam. He was debating the benefits of fake-yawning versus loudly remarking on his late it was when Cam beat him to the punch.

"Oh, geeze, it's getting way late. This pupper's got to get home to bed, and I'm sure you've had a long day too."

His face suddenly brightened considerably. "You know what, I'll take you out for breakfast tomorrow, my treat! I have to do something to pay you back for this."

He was so sincere about it too, his eyes nearly sparkling. The butterflies in Ben's stomach were making a valiant attempt at reanimation.

Ben stamped them out with prejudice.

"You literally did pay me back," he said. "Too much, probably."

Cam may have been down to earth when it came to some of his ideals, but his standards for dog-sitting wages were obscene.

Besides.

"I'm working tomorrow morning," Ben added. "I usually cover at least Saturdays so that Paul can have the day off."

Cam probably had no clue who Paul was, but he dutifully nodded along.

"Okay. That's cool. We can work with that."

They literally couldn't, because Ben's work schedule was pretty set in stone (well, it was unless or until he told James he didn't feel like coming in that day). But Cam wanted him to agree, so shrugged and busied himself with petting Max, who had started brushing up against his legs looking for attention.

"Time to go home, buddy," Ben said to Max, because it was easier to say it to him than to Cam. Max licked his hand, because he was the best dog ever.

Cam quite obviously looked Ben up and down, making a visible point of scrutinizing him before nodding to himself. "Alright, we'd better get going. Have a good night, Ben, we'll see you!"

For someone who invited himself in so easily, Cam was also surprisingly quick to leave.

He'd already installed Max in the passenger side of his car by the time Ben thought to step onto the porch and call out, "Hey, aren't you taking some of your stuff with you?"

Cam only smirked and hopped into the driver's seat of the car.

"Nah, we'll keep it here for next time."

He sounded awfully confident about that _next time_.

As Ben watched Cam pull out of his driveway for the thirty second drive home, he sent up a silent prayer that maybe Cam's confidence would lead to good things.

At least it couldn't hurt, right?

~~~

Ben honestly didn't mind working on the weekends. Not that he didn't enjoy working with Paul, but there was also something peaceful about going into the bakery in the wee hours of the morning, turning all the lights on and waiting for the ovens to warm and bring some life into the kitchen. Since Carey's campaign to avoid running into PK, where Ben had been conscripted by James into learning how to make coffee, he now knew how to operate the fancy machines in the front and could make his own coffee without having to wait for Kuzya to roll in.

In his typical fashion, Kuzy always showed up minutes before they were due to open, rubbing his knuckles over his eyes and dumping his backpack with a _thud_ behind the counter, mumbling, "I'm not late, I'm not late," as he shoved past Ben to get to the time clock. Ben snorted to himself and set the morning's first batch of muffins in the display case.

They operated fairly well, just the two of them. The bakery only opened for the morning and early lunch shift on weekends, closing by the early afternoon. Since the bakery had actually started getting popular, they usually had a steady stream of customers, not so many as to be overwhelming but definitely enough to keep them busy.

Once Ben had finished the morning's baking, at this time of year he'd usually end up spending all of his spare time working on the endless holiday cookie orders. Kuzya was in crunch time for his exams, so even if he didn't have much spare time, he still had a textbook open on the front counter, taking glances at it as he drizzled chocolate syrup over a mountain of whipped cream atop someone's drink.

"You're going to get it dirty," Ben had warned him, but Kuzya just grunted and waved him off, never looking up from his book. Kuzy didn't have Carey's calm-in-a-hurricane demeanor under pressure, but he did have this sort of frenetic efficiency to him that was fascinating to watch. It was all of the nervous energy and jerky movements of James behind the counter, but Kuzya was actually functional.

By around ten, Ben had finished the last of the day's baking, some basic chocolate chip cookies for the front. He always made the muffins and pastries first because they didn't keep as well overnight and it was better to put them out early if they wanted to sell through them. Cookies stored better, and they tended to be more popular with the afternoon crowd who wanted a snack but felt that a pastry would spoil their meals.

He was just starting to scrub down some of the used pans when James came trudging in through the door to the front. He looked exhausted, and his hair was more ridiculous than usual, but at least it matched the disheveled state of the suit he was wearing.

Ben smirked down at the sink of soapy water.

"Rough night?"

He didn't have to look to assume that James was flipping him off.

"I am an adult," James said in that prim voice he always put on when he was trying not to be embarrassed, "And as an adult I am allowed to spend the evening with my boyfriend of two years and not be judged for it."

"Your shirt's on inside out."

"No it's no- oh shit."

When Ben looked over, James was flailing around in an attempt to remove his suit jacket so that he could correct his shirt. He had one of the fresh chocolate chip cookies shoved in his mouth, evidently because his hands were too occupied to hold it now.

"No stripping in the kitchen," Ben said lazily, turning and leaning back against the sink.

"Fff 'oo," James growled around the cookie.

"That's not a nice way to speak to your employees."

James finally rid himself of his jacket and flung it over a stool, taking the cookie from his mouth. He glowered at Ben. "You were a lot nicer before you started hanging out with Carey."

Ben ignored the twinge in his chest. "I'll have you know I learned that from Paul."

"Yeah, well, you're supposed to be the nice one." James took a bite of the cookie before realizing that he could just set it on the counter so that both hands were free to unbutton his shirt.

"And because I'm a nice boss," he grumbled while chewing, "I'll tell you that your puppy daddy is out front looking for you."

"My _what_?"

James was struggling to try to figure out how to unbutton a shirt that was inside out when the buttons weren't easily accessible, before he finally got the top one undone and then dragged the whole thing off over his head. Just how James managed to wear a button-down shirt inside out without realizing it suddenly became a lot clearer.

"Your puppy daddy. The dad of your puppy." When Ben still just stared at him, James rolled his eyes. "Cam. Max's owner. He's out front looking for you."

James held his shirt in front of him as if questioning if he should bother trying to flip it right-side out and put it back on. Apparently thinking better of it, he instead unlocked the door to his office and flung the shirt and jacket on his desk. After digging around for a moment he pulled an old Herb's t-shirt over his head.

He frowned when he saw Ben still there, watching him.

"This isn't a free show, Bish. This is your boss telling you to go get paid to flirt with a dude with a cute dog, what are you still doing here?"

"I don't flirt with Cam." For some unknown reason that felt like the most important thing for Ben to say.

James gave him the sort of squinty-eyed frown of disgust that he usually reserved for people who tried to explain to him what kombucha was and why he should serve it.

"Then you fucking-well should be, what the hell is wrong with you? That dumbass likes you so much he just brought you coffee and donuts for breakfast."

"...To a coffee shop?"

James shrugged and steered Ben towards the door by his shoulders. "Well, at least we don't make donuts here so that's something."

The next thing he knew James had shoved him through the door and Ben was behind the counter, staring at Cam, who had set down his haul from Dunkin Donuts on the front counter and was squinting at his phone.

When he saw Ben, his whole face brightened, and wow, yeah, it was still a really nice smile.

"Ben! I told you I'd get you breakfast!" He went to hold out cardboard donut box and a coffee cup, realized his phone was still in his hands, and fumbled it into his pocket before proceeding.

He was so pleased with himself that Ben couldn't help being a little bit charmed. That stupid sunshiny smile could melt the coldest of hearts, and Ben was a pretty sentimental guy on a good day anyway.

"Thanks, you didn't have to do that."

"No, I said I was going to do it, and so I did." Then Cam frowned. "In retrospect, I should have figured you guys have all the coffee you could want here. _Buuuut_ I didn't see any donuts here, so that's a plus, right?"

Kuzya chose that moment to nudge up against Ben's side and lean over the counter, which put him more at Cam's height.

"What if we just finish all the donuts already, hm?"

Cam shrugged. "Well then I brought more! Do you want one? I got a full dozen."

Kuzy was already pulling the box over to himself. Without looking up from his perusal he pointed a finger at Cam. "I like you, Max's dad. You have _лучший щенок_ and you bring food. Ben, you can keep him."

That horribly familiar creeping heat returned to Ben's face, and he couldn't even blame it on the heat from the kitchens.

"I don't- he doesn't mean- Kuzya's English isn't very-"

"My English is _best_!" Kuzya protested

"Ben." Cam was still smiling, and it not only went to his eyes but seemed to take up his whole face. He looked so _fond_ , and he was looking at Ben, and Ben wasn't used to feeling this way around anyone except-

Well. Ben wasn't used to feeling this way.

He clearly missed whatever it was that Cam had said, because Cam was watching him expectantly and Ben was still staring at him like an idiot.

"I'm sorry, what?"

Cam shook his head, smile never dropping. "I was asking if you could take your break now and hang out with me for a few minutes."

Ben didn't have time to even process a reply because Kuzy, having apparently learned a little too much from James, was already trying to manhandle Ben out from behind the counter. "He says yes."

"I didn't-"

But it wasn't like he hadn't been about to say yes, either.

He stopped himself and swallowed.

"I mean. That would be nice, yes."

Cam beamed up at him and grabbed up the coffee and donuts, balancing them all precariously and steadfastly refusing to let Ben help him. He chose a table by the windows, next to the display cakes that James made a huge production of dusting now. The window had been decorated for Christmas – James had put the lights up right on December 1st – and it was actually really nice. Nashville rarely had snow, but the lights cast a warm glow on the tables, and the little bits of holly and garland helped to make the whole thing a little more cheery.

"Did you make those?"

Cam had been in the process of fussing over the food, giving Ben his drink and spreading a napkin on the table in front of him like a placemat, before he'd gotten distracted looking at one of the fondant masterpieces in the window.

"Paulie did. He's one of my bosses – he and James, the one in the messed up suit, they own this place. Paul's the primary baker, he does the fancy stuff, all the special orders, I just do..."

He shrugged.

"Everything else."

Just as he did everything, Cam made a dramatic production of rolling his eyes. He opened up the box of donuts and nudged it towards Ben, urging him to pick one.

"I'm sure it's not just _everything else_ if you're the one making it."

He was so entirely dismissive of the idea that Ben had to quirk a smile. He grabbed a honey cruller.

"You haven't even had my baking before."

Now Cam looked offended again, but apparently at himself.

"Oh my God, you're right. Hold on, I'll be right back. Wait, what's the best thing you make? Never mind, I'm sure it's all amazing, stay right here."

He didn't pause once for breath, let alone to let Ben speak. In a flurry of movement Cam was hunched over the counter, saying something in a low voice to Kuzya, and Ben had to turn away to keep from noticing that Cam's pants were a little too tight in certain areas.

The coffee was okay. Maybe he was a bit biased out of workplace pride, or maybe Carey and Kuzy really were just very good baristas. But drinking it still made his chest feel warm, and it wasn't just the heat of the drink.

Nobody had ever gone out of their way to visit Ben at work before.

Nobody had ever gone out of their way for Ben before, period.

He wasn't used to that feeling, but he knew he'd like to try.

Cam came back with a plate holding a double chocolate muffin and a smiling gingerbread man.

"Okay, I ended up getting two, because it all looked too amazing to choose."

Ben laughed. "I actually did make both of those, but the icing is a James Neal original."

Already peeling the wrapper off his muffin, Cam only shrugged. "Well, you still made it, so I'm sure it's delicious.

The bite he took out of the muffin would have had Paul shaking his head in disappointment, and as it was, Ben could only stare in fascination. It was almost like watching a snake eat, except the snake didn't usually moan its appreciation after.

"I think this is the best thing I've ever tasted. Oh my God, I'd marry this muffin if I could, but then I'd be eating my husband and that's illegal."

Ben blushed and looked down at the table, shifting around in his seat. He ripped off a piece of the cruller and ate it just to give himself something to do other than listen to Cam's pornographic noises. "Ah, thank you. You don't have to flatter me, though, I know-"

"Dude, no, it's not flattery, this is just, like, the best muffin I've ever had in my life. For real. I'm in love."

He was nearly finished at this point, and Ben couldn't help but wonder how he had important dinners with clients if he ate like this on a normal day.

"Do you...normally eat this fast?"

Cam froze with the last bite of the muffin on the way to his mouth. "...Was I eating fast?"

Aw, shit, now he was frowning. A guy like Cam should never look that self-conscious.

"Just a little?" Ben hedged.

He wasn't trying to make Cam feel bad, but he put the last piece of the muffin down, thankfully wiping his hands on a napkin before running them through his curly hair.

"I didn't mean to – it's a really good muffin, seriously. I'm just...maybe a little nervous? And when I'm nervous I talk a lot. And I do everything fast. And I say too much. My mom says it's good to be a little nervous sometimes because that tells your brain that what you're doing is important but also it tells my brain that I should just keep going and going because sometimes if I just keep talking I can work my way out of any problem but sometimes I just end up talking way too much, like I am...right...now..."

He grimaced, evidently chagrined, and averted his eyes to the table, picking at the last bite of muffin. Ben watched him helplessly, wringing his hands in his lap and uncomfortably aware that Kuzya was watching hawkishly from the counter – apparently they were more important than studying or helping customers.

Feeling those old butterflies come to life in his stomach again, Ben took a deep breath and bit the bullet.

"What's, uh, what's making you nervous?"

He bumped his knee against Cam's in what he hoped came off as a friendly gesture. It wasn't much of a reach, seeing as these tables were a tight fit for someone Ben's height anyways.

Cam looked up at him through his lashes – and why hadn't Ben noticed how long his eyelashes were before now? – and smiled feebly.

"Um, is it bad if I say you?"

Well, yeah, that felt kind of bad. Ben had spent most of his life as a pretty big guy, but he'd like to think that he wasn't intimidating about it. Sure, his coaches had wanted him to throw his size around, and God only knew his dad had made it well-known that he thought someone Ben's size should be "tough enough" to match, but Ben had always thought he was a pretty friendly, approachable guy. He'd only ever been in a physical altercation once in his life, and he hadn't even hit his dad, so it didn't even really count.

The last thing he wanted was for people to be afraid of him for something he couldn't control. Especially someone like Cam, who was sweet and bubbly and refreshingly authentic, even if he could be a bit hectic at times.

"I'm sorry," Ben said, clutching his cooling coffee cup between his hands. "I didn't mean – if I did something out of line, or if I made you feel uncomfortable in any way-"

"Oh, dude, whoa, wait, no!" Cam reached out to grab one of Ben's wrists, while at the same time hooking a foot around his ankle, as if Ben was about to stand up and leave.

"Noooo, no, no, no, Ben, you didn't do anything. Well, I mean, you did do something, because you're over here, being all-" He waved his free hand as if to encompass Ben. "-and I'm like, just, _wow_ , you know? Like, you're a lot – in a good way! In the best way."

He was still holding Ben's wrist, rubbing his thumb over Ben's pulse, and neither of them seemed inclined for him to let go any time soon.

"I'm not saying this right."

Cam cleared his throat, and then began again, more slowly.

"What I'm _trying_ to say is that I am a little intimidated by you, but in a good way, because you're like, a super great guy, and your baking is amazing, and my dog is in love with you, and my _mom_ asked me why I hadn't asked you out yet after only knowing you for like, five minutes, and I was like, 'I don't know, because he's way out of my league?' Because you're like, six-and-a-half feet of the hottest guy I've ever seen, and your eyes are gorgeous, and also when you smile at me I kind of want to puke but like in the way I usually feel right before I close a really big deal at work, so it's honestly the best way."

He placed both hands over Ben's, cupping them between his own, and maybe it should have looked a little ridiculous, with how much larger Ben's hands were, but all Ben could feel was the warmth as Cam stared into his eyes.

"Ben Bishop, would you make me the happiest man in the world and go on a second date with me?"

There were some moments in Ben's life where he felt like he could hear the record scratching, and this was one of them.

"Hold on, _second_ date?"

Cam nodded fervently. "Well yeah, of course, because this is our first date, and if we go on a second date, then it's like, official."

Ben squinted at him. "You came to my place of work, during my work shift, and you brought me breakfast to eat on my break, and now it's a date."

He wasn't even surprised when Cam squinted back at him. "It was always a date. Because we're eating together at a coffee shop. And it's even got, like." He nodded at the window, still refusing to let go of Ben's hands. "Festive lights and stuff. _Romantic_ lights."

Ben took a deep breath, and tried to remind himself that his ultimate end-goal was to actually agree to date this guy, and God, what kind of alternate universe had he stepped into here?

" _Yes_ , but I _work here_ , and I'm _at work_ , as in presently punched in, so it never would have occurred to me that this was supposed to be a date."

Cam's mouth was frozen in a perfect 'O' of surprise.

"...Oh. Okay. Um, I can work with this." His grip on Ben's hands tightened.

"Ben Bishop, will you accept this first date with me, here, at your coffee shop that doesn't repair electronics, and then also go out on more dates with me in the future because you're really great and I think we could rock each other's worlds?"

How could he possibly say no to that?

"Yeah. Yeah, I will."

If he had ever thought that Cam's smile was bright before, it was positively radiant now. He squeezed Ben's hands and made this move forward as if to get closer to him, before he realized that the table was in the way. Then he settled back in his chair, practically vibrating in place, never once letting go of Ben's hands.

"Awesome, that's so – that's amazing, and you're like, so damn adorable, man, you have no idea, I'm so excited – _Max_ is going to be so excited, oh my God."

 _Ben_ was pretty excited, truth be told. He couldn't remember the last time someone had ever officially asked him on a date. He wasn't sure that anyone ever had.

These weren't the sort of things that happened to Ben Bishop, who never got quite what he wanted. Some people might say that maybe Cam was his consolation prize for not getting Carey, but nobody who met Cam could ever argue that he was second best.

There was a cute, funny, charming guy who actually liked Ben well enough to pursue him. It was such a novel experience that all Ben could do was sit there and smile, taking in the moment with Cam there in the glow of the holiday lights, looking back at Ben like Christmas truly had come early.

"This is so great. Can I, like – do you want to come over to my place for dinner tonight? Or is that too soon? I know you should probably have more than like, eight hours between dates, but also it's Saturday night and I'd really love to have you over, and I know Max would want to see you too, so-"

"Yes."

"-so if you wanted to- wait, yes? Yeah, okay, yeah, so maybe, like, six? Is that too early?"

Before he could get himself going again Ben just shook his head and smiled helplessly. "No, Cam, six is great. I'll see you then?"

"Yes! Yes, I will see you at my house at six tonight. For a date." It was like he had to say it out loud, just to make sure they were both in agreement this time.

Ben nodded and shot a glance over at the front counter. Kuzy had his phone out and looked suspiciously like he was doing more than just checking his email.

"For a date. I should get back to work. Thank you for the...for everything. I'll see you tonight?"

"Definitely, for sure." Cam's face would almost be solemn, if he wasn't smiling so much. When Ben went to stand up, Cam finally let go of his hands, only to stuff the box of donuts in them.

"You should keep these. In case you get hungry. Also to bribe your coworkers into liking me, because I want your friends to like me."

The sad thing was that, even working in a popular bakery, they probably really would be won over by mass-produced donuts. Ben's friends didn't have very discerning palates.

Ben nodded, and then for a long moment they just stared at each other, neither knowing quite what to do. Finally Ben had to break the moment, gathering up his trash and his cold coffee with his free hand.

Giving Cam one last smile he said, "I'll see you tonight."

He had to walk away, or he'd just keep staring. He didn't let himself look back until he heard the bell above the door ring.

When he did, Cam caught his eye through the glass and gave him a little wave before going on his way.

Ben's heart was busy melting a little bit more when the box of donuts was ripped from his hands.

"You barely eat one," Kuzy huffed in disgust. Clearly he was planning on taking possession of the rest, which wasn't really an issue for Ben anyway.

"Were you filming us?"

Kuzya picked out a Boston cream and nodded gamely. "Yes, we can use for your wedding, very cute. Plus, Nealer wants to see."

"For my- God, it's just a date. Nobody is talking about getting married."

He didn't expect for Kuzy to shove his phone into his face. The background was a picture of Max that Kuzya had taken when he came to Ben's house on Wednesday.

"He need two parents, Bishie."

It wasn't even worth the effort of arguing.

Ben just shook his head and made for the back, leaving Kuzya to his donuts. He still had a few hours before he could leave, so he may as well try to keep himself occupied.

Just as he pushed open the door, Kuzya said, "We should have mistletoe. I will tell Nealer."

"Nealer says that mistletoe is a breeding ground for sexual harassment lawsuits."

He let the door swing shut behind him, but not before Kuzya whined, "But we need for true love!"

Ben ignored him and put on his apron before heading back to the sink to finish cleaning off the pans.

There was mistletoe hanging above the entrance by the time Ben went home.

~~~

The butterflies were in full riot that evening when Ben made the thirty second walk to Cam's house.

He hadn't really been sure what to bring – it wasn't like he got invited on dinner dates that often – but he wasn't much of a wine guy himself, and he wasn't sure if Cam drank beer, or if it might look a little classless to bring beer on a date. In the end he played it safe, stuck with what he knew, and made a chocolate torte, his mom's go-to emergency party dessert.

The logical part of him knew that Cam probably wouldn't expect him to bring anything, and would be thrilled no matter what Ben brought, but the rest of Ben wanted to make sure this was special, because, well – it had been a long, long time since Ben had anything special in his life.

Any _one_ special.

He just wanted this to go well.

As he mounted the steps to Cam's porch he could hear Max barking excitedly on the other side of the door. Before he could even knock Cam was there, whipping the door open with that thrilled smile on his face.

"You're here! Not that I didn't think you'd come but like – you're here, this is great. I'm so excited. Max is excited too."

Max was pretty much always excited, but he was wriggling all over the place when Cam opened the door further to let Ben inside, bouncing around his heels excitedly as Ben took his shoes off and handed the dessert platter to Cam.

"Oh, man, you didn't have to make anything!" Cam said as Ben hung his coat up on a hook near the door. "Though this looks, like super amazing, wow, you did this all today?"

"It didn't take that long."

Ben couldn't say any more, because he knelt down to greet Max, and got a face full of fluffy brown fur for his troubles. Max truly was beside himself with excitement, licking Ben's face as if they hadn't just seen each other less than twenty-four hours ago. He kept licking Ben, then ran off for a moment only to come back and shove a stuffed dog in Ben's face, squeaking it furiously.

"Aw, he wants to show you his puppy," Cam cooed.

With the appropriate amount of sincerity, Ben said, "Thank you, Max. It's a very nice puppy."

Max squeaked it a few more times, because no dog of Cam's wouldn't be at least a little bit of a show-off.

"I'm making chicken alfredo, because it's like, the one thing that I know I'm really good at making," Cam said as they entered the kitchen. "It's really good, I promise, even though I use jarred sauce."

He was so earnest that Ben had to laugh. "It's okay, I'm not exactly a Michelin chef myself. I don't do pretty much anything from scratch other than baking."

His mother had never had a chance to teach him to cook, after all, and once she was gone, there wasn't really a lot of cooking in their house in general. Ben had grown-up with a nearly professional knowledge of local take-out menus.

Dinner felt impossibly easy. Cam talked about his job, about life in Columbus and how it differed from Nashville. He brought up how his firm had season tickets to the Predators to help schmooze big ticket clients, and was absolutely floored when Ben told him that he'd actually personally met half of the Predators at this point.

"Oh man, have you met Subban yet?" he asked with wide eyes.

It felt almost too easy for Ben to say, "Yeah, he's actually dating my best friend."

The noise that Cam made was high-pitched and surprisingly cute, and it was enough to brush all thoughts of Carey from Ben's mind.

There was a moment, though, where Cam knocked his leg against Ben's and said, "You still never told me why you'd leave St. Louis to come here."

And Ben's heart started racing in his chest, as he thought of all of the reasons why he hadn't set foot in Missouri in years, trying to think of how he'd explain, when there was so much to say and simultaneously nothing worth mentioning, how he'd dress it up, how he'd sanitize it, how he'd make it more palatable dinner conversation.

"The school I liked best was here, and once I got here I liked the city so much I never wanted to leave."

That was really the sum of it, wasn't it?

Cam smiled and reached out to take his hand, and Ben figured that it was good enough.

The torte was a hit, though Cam's indecent moaning was both a blessing and a curse at this point. Ben was just happy he was sitting behind a table because Cam was licking his fork like he loved it a little too much and it had been a long, long time since Ben went on a date.

Cam held his hand most of the night, because apparently that was a thing that he really liked to do. He was a pretty touchy guy in general, always putting a hand on Ben's shoulder, his arm, his back. When Ben insisted on washing the dishes after dinner, Cam pressed right up against his side to help dry them. He took Ben's hand to lead him to the couch to put on the Preds game, and he spent most of the game holding it in his lap, mindlessly running his fingers over the lines of Ben's palm, curling their fingers together and rubbing Ben's hand with his thumb.

Even when Max shoved up on the couch with them, Cam kept hold of Ben's hand, using the other to pet his dog.

"There's a reason we have two hands, you know," he told Ben very seriously.

Ben was honest enough to admit that he was starting to feel more than a little smitten.

When the game was over and Ben's early morning finally started to catch up with him, Cam once again insisted on walking him home.

"It's like, two steps away, and it's more time I get to spend with you, so."

He'd shrugged and grabbed Ben's hand, and as with everything else, Ben just let himself be pulled along for the ride.

The tableau they painted was eerily similar to Thanksgiving: Ben and Cam, standing in the light of Ben's porch, Max sniffing happily around their feet.

Only this time, they were holding hands, and the reason they were holding hands was because they'd just had a very successful second date, and because that date had gone so well, Ben felt pretty comfortable putting a hand on Cam's waist and pulling him closer, and Cam was all-too-inclined to tilt his head up just a bit, and this time, when Ben kissed Cam in the windy darkness of a December evening, he only felt warmth inside.

~~~

"You two are disgustingly cute together," James said a few days later. He was watching the video that Kuzya had taken for the umpteenth time, shaking his head. "Like, I can't get over it. You've always been adorable, don't get me wrong, but the two of you together are so sweet I want to puke. And you know I have a high sugar tolerance."

As if to emphasize that he shoved an entire Linzer cookie in his mouth at once. Without missing a beat Paul smacked him on the back of the head for not showing appropriate appreciation for his work.

James wasn't even fazed.

"Seriously, this is like, way too precious. And now you're actually dating like actual adults. I never thought I'd see the day, our very own Ben Bishop with a boyfriend."

To be fair, Ben was at the point of never expecting that to happen either. At least not after all his hopes with Carey had gone up in flames.

"We've been dating less than a week, you can calm down," he said instead, rolling out dough for sugar cookies.

Of course, the guys wouldn't let something as trivial as that get them down. By the time Ben came in on Monday morning, they'd all seen the video, and now they couldn't shut up about it. Kuzya saw it as an excellent way to guarantee unlimited access to Max, and was therefore very supportive of their relationship. James was caught up in the romance of it all, and apparently couldn't stop remarking on how "stupidly adorable" they were, even though he'd never actually seen them together in person.

Paul was thankfully a normal amount of supportive but respectful, not that Ben would really expect anything else from him. All he'd said Monday morning was, "I'm happy for you, Ben. I hope it all works out."

Then he'd turned back to his dough, and that was that.

Ben could really appreciate that, compared to what he had to deal with from the others.

The only one who took it weirdly was Carey. Ben was well aware that Carey thought that he was moving too fast to start dating Cam, because Carey still thought he was moving too fast to be babysitting Cam's dog. It wasn't like he went out of his way to bring up his new relationship at work – actually, Ben never initiated conversations about it at all. It was too new for him to really have anything to say, not that James or Kuzy would believe him.

But Carey...Carey got a little squirrely about it.

He had seemed pretty okay about it on Monday; actually, he kept everything pretty normal. When he and Ben went for lunch that day, he didn't bring up Ben's new relationship at all.

Tuesday he started to get weird. Cam had come to visit on Ben's lunch break, making it the first time that any of the guys had officially met him as someone Ben was dating instead of the weird not-customer with the broken espresso machine. Carey had just upped and left without a word. It was the end of his shift after all, so he was entirely within his rights to do that, but it was bizarre for him to disappear without even saying goodbye.

By the next morning things got really strange. He barely looked at Ben all day, and when Ben asked if he wanted to go out for lunch, he hastily said that he already had plans and left.

Seeing as Ben knew for a fact that PK was away on a road trip and that Carey literally didn't know anyone in Nashville other than PK and the guys at Herb's, it was a blatant lie, but Ben let him go all the same. It wasn't really his place to question what Carey did with his days, even if it hurt to be brushed off like that.

He ended up telling Cam that night when they Skyped each other. Cam was away again, only for the night, on some sort of trip to New York City. Ben was sitting on his bed with Max passed out next to him when the call connected.

"There are my boys!" Cam cheered. It was certainly enough to get Max up and wagging his tail, but the little smirk on Cam's face was definitely more intended for Ben's benefit.

Ben cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. He couldn't say it wasn't working.

"Hey, uh, how's New York?"

" _Cold_ ," Cam whined. He was slumped against a mountain of pillows set against a headboard, and though he had his tablet propped on his chest, Ben could still see that he was also quite shirtless.

"You know, if you had a shirt on, maybe you wouldn't be so cold."

Cam leered at him, as well as one could leer through a camera. "But that would defeat half the purpose of the call."

At this point Ben could almost call that flush of warmth on his neck an old friend.

"I'm in bed with your _dog_ right now so I'm going to say that nothing of that sort is happening tonight."

He wasn't even going to address that they had barely done more than kiss yet, so he wasn't really inclined to jump right into Skype sex.

But Cam seemed to just be teasing anyway, given the way he groaned dramatically and splayed himself back against the pillows. "All this work for nothing. Okay, fine, we'll do things your way. How's my other best boy doing?"

Ben angled his laptop so that the camera was pointed more at Max, who was fervently sniffing the keyboard trying to determine the source of Cam's voice.

"He's doing okay. Missing you, I guess. You've got him pretty confused right now."

"Aww, poor puppy," Cam cooed. "I'll be home tomorrow, Maxie, and maybe you and me and Ben can go for a nice walk in the park, huh?"

For all that he was talking to Max, his eyes were angled up towards the camera.

Ben cleared his throat. "Uh, yeah. Yes. I think the weather is supposed to be pretty nice tomorrow."

"Nicer than here, I'd hope. This is one of those reasons I moved south, man, I don't have to deal with snow anymore."

"And because your bosses told you to?"

Cam hummed. "And because my bosses told me to and offered me lots of money to do it. But between you and me, I'd say it's been working out pretty well so far."

He winked then, taking a lot of concerted effort to do it, just the way his mom had back at Thanksgiving. Apparently nobody in the Atkinson family was able to wink properly, and Ben was just a little more enamored.

"But enough about me, my work is boring. What's going on with you? Any more holiday blow-ups?"

Cam was fascinated by stories of rude, high-maintenance customers, especially the types that were drawn out by special orders around the holiday season. He'd practically had to get popcorn when Ben told him about the woman who thought she could walk in the door and take another customer's order "because she needed it more."

"No, nothing major to report. Work's been pretty quiet, actually."

Too quiet, since Carey had started giving him the cold shoulder.

"Hey, what's with that face? Clearly something happened, you look all worried. What's up?"

Ben hadn't thought he looked much of anything; he'd always been under the impression that he did a fairly good job of masking his emotions, seeing as people never commented on his expressions. Either he was really good at keeping his feelings off of his face, or nobody else had ever cared enough to ask what was wrong.

He'd prefer to think it was the former. Maybe Cam was more perceptive than he'd thought.

"It's not a big deal," he said, seeing no reason to beat around the bush. "Carey's just been a little off the last day or so. I'm sure it's nothing, he's probably just got something else on his mind."

He didn't want to say that Carey got broody sometimes, because Carey would probably be so offended he'd never speak to Ben again, but he did sometimes have these moments where he got pensive and quiet and wanted to be alone. Ben could respect those boundaries, so he'd never really pushed the matter.

"Well, what'd he do?"

Ben shrugged and looked down at Max, who had settled across his lap. He ran his fingers gently across the top of Max's head.

"Like I said, it's not anything huge. He's just been really quiet, kind of disappeared without a word yesterday, and today he told me he had plans when I asked him to lunch, even though his boyfriend's out of town and everyone else he talks to was already at Herb's."

Cam scrunched up his face. "Ouch. _Rude_."

"I mean, it's not like he's not entitled to his privacy. His plans could have been to do something on his own, I don't know his life."

Cam was still squinting at him, but this time it was a little more scrutinizing. It was a weird look on his face. "Uh, didn't you say he's like your best friend? Wouldn't that mean you knew at least a little bit about his life?"

"Yeah, but..."

There wasn't a good way to explain it to someone who didn't live it. Cam had always been an open book, even when Ben didn't know that it was a book he'd ever want to read. He wore his emotions on his sleeve, he said what was on his mind. He was so honest and forthcoming about his life that Ben couldn't imagine Cam had any dark closets to shove his secrets into.

It wouldn't be easy to get a guy like him to understand that mutually agreed upon silence about their pasts, that quiet acceptance, _I won't ask if you don't_. Ben's coworkers didn't ask about his life and he didn't ask about theirs.

Except.

 _Except_.

Ben's modus operandi for years was to be pleasant and friendly and to keep his secrets to himself and respect everyone else's rights to their own. And where had that gotten him?

He had friends that he liked to think of as family, who didn't even know his birthday without pulling it from his employee records. They spent holidays together, but until the past week none of them had ever even been to his house. Most of them never knew that he'd even played hockey before, even though literally all of the rest of them had, and they lived their lives inundated by NHL players.

They didn't know that his mom was a baker, or that he used variations of her recipes all the time, or that he missed her every day like he had a gaping hole in his heart because the last person to truly know him had died when he was nine.

He couldn't help but remember what Carey had said to him a long time ago.

_I can talk to you for hours and feel like I know everything about you, and if you handed me a pen and paper and asked me to write down the actual facts that I knew about you afterwards, I don't think I'd be able to come up with a single one._

There was a certain comfort in keeping his past to himself, in not asking and never telling. It was impossibly safe, and incredibly lonely.

But Ben wanted to know his friends. He wanted a family who knew him, _really knew him_ , and loved him for it. And he wanted to do the same for them.

He was a ghost in his own life, and there was no way he could ever try to make sense of it for Cam when right now he couldn't make sense of it himself.

"I guess you're right," he said. "I could...I guess I could ask him. I just don't want to intrude, you know?"

Cam was oddly solemn, like he understood that something big had just happened but was going to give Ben time to process it, and maybe that was where Ben had been going wrong all this time. There was a difference between waiting until people were ready to share something with you and closing yourself off to the idea of ever knowing someone intimately.

Then again, if nobody ever really knew you, could it really hurt when they left?

"It's not intruding if you care about your friend and you want to make sure they're okay," Cam said. "I mean, if he wants you to back off, then yeah, back off, but it never hurts to check in just to see that he's doing alright. What's the worst that could happen?"

And that was the crux of it, wasn't it?

What was the worst that could happen?

Carey might actually open up to Ben, and then Ben would feel obligated to reciprocate. Or, Carey would be angry that Ben broke their unspoken agreement and not want to talk to him at all.

But if that was the case, could Ben really claim that they were close enough to be family, when their friendship came with so many caveats and strings attached?

He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. Max grumbled in his lap and leaned up to lick his chin, just once.

Ben buried a hand in his fur and leaned down to kiss the top of his head. When he looked up at the screen, Cam was smiling softly.

"I think you'll figure it out, Ben. You're a smart guy."

It was funny that Cam would say that, because if Ben was allegedly so smart, then why did he always feel so lost?

~~~

He decided to bring it up the next day.

"Hey Carey, would you want to go to lunch today? I have something I want to talk to you about." If he saved it for the end of Carey's shift, at least they'd have an easy escape route if things went south.

Carey wouldn't even look up from changing out the coffee grounds.

"No, sorry, I'm busy today."

He should have expected that one.

"Please? It's important. I wanted to..."

"I can't."

And this was... _really_ unlike Carey. He could be blunt, but he wasn't cold.

Especially not towards Ben.

He took a deep breath, rubbing his knuckles against the tops of his legs.

"Okay, is there another time that we can-"

"Look," Carey interrupted, "I just don't have the time right now, okay?"

The glare he leveled at Ben was enough to make him take a step back. This was exactly the type of confrontation he'd always wanted to avoid. He was pushing, and it wasn't welcome.

But then, it was just like Cam had said. A truly concerned friend would have to push just a little bit, especially when someone was acting out of character.

He eyed the front of the store to make sure it was clear of customers before he ducked his head and said lowly, "Carey, what's going on? You're kind of worrying me here."

In the end he thought he would have felt better if Carey had just spun around and started yelling at him. The slow turn of his head, the expression gradually turning dark and incredulous, was infinitely worse.

"You're worried about me?" he said. "That's kind of rich, seeing as I'm the only one around here who's being normal."

That record scratch moment was back again.

" _What_? Carey, I'm sorry, I have no clue what you're talking-"

"Of course you don't," Carey cut him off. "None of you seem to think this is at all weird."

"That _what's_ weird?"

"You!" Carey exploded. It was the loudest Ben had ever actually heard him before, and enough that he stumbled back another step.

"You, suddenly waking up and deciding that you were going to shack up with some asshole you barely know, and everyone's just on board with that like it's totally normal."

 _Whoa_ , what the fuck?

"What the hell are you talking about? What does Cam have to do with any of this?"

"Everything, apparently!" Carey actually waved his arms in the air, and that was the most startling thing of all of this, because Carey Price was never, ever physically demonstrative. "Because it took you two years to tell me that your favorite color is blue, but you just met that guy like two weeks ago and you're not only dating him, but he's telling Kuzya about how much he likes your mom's chocolate torte recipe! I didn't even know your mom _had_ a chocolate torte recipe! You're a professional baker, and we've been friends for years, and I didn't even know your mom baked!"

Ben winced. That was a valid complaint, made all the more meaningful because it was _Carey_ of all people complaining. He looked around the shop again, telling himself it was to make sure they weren't making a scene in front of customers and not because he didn't want to look Carey in the eyes.

"I didn't mean to _not_ tell you. It's just...it came up!"

Carey scoffed. "Since when do things _ever_ 'just come up' with you? Getting information out of you is like prying teeth, and you know what, I was cool with it because you didn't bother me about my past either. It was our thing, it was fine, I figured that's just the way you were. But then you turn around and you're telling your life's story to this _stranger_."

"I'm dating him, Carey, I'm allowed to share things with someone I'm dating-"

"Yeah, but it's kind of shitty that he's learned more about you in two weeks that the rest of us have known in two years!"

Ben frowned, a sudden realization coming over him that made him take pause.

"Are you...jealous of Cam?"

And oh, wouldn't Ben have killed for something like that to have happened a month ago.

Carey's face flushed red in a way that Ben had never seen before. He didn't know it was possible for Carey to _be_ embarrassed.

"Fuck off, I don't care who you date and you know that."

That one still stung more than he'd like.

"But I care that I thought we were friends, and all this time I thought you just didn't say anything about yourself because you're a private guy, and then it turns out that no, you just didn't want to talk to any of us."

That was...so far off base it would have been comical if Ben wasn't so confused, and more than a little irritated.

"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about," he said in a low voice, "It's not like you were very forthcoming either, so I don't see where you get off telling me who I can and can't talk to."

Carey honest-to-goodness growled in frustration, raking a hand through his hair.

"I'm not trying to dictate your life, but I'm saying it kind of really sucks!"

That was about where Ben lost his last remaining scraps of patience.

"Why the fuck do you care? You've made it more than clear that you don't care about _getting closer to me_ or whatever it is that you want to call this. You literally just said that you don't care about my romantic life, which you made pretty obvious when you let me keep making a jackass of myself in front of you when you were never going to give a rat's ass about me. So please, explain to me how _any_ of this is even remotely your business?"

Carey looked stunned, and Ben felt a sick sense of pride in actually being able to shut him up. Everything fell silent for a moment, save for their heavy breathing, and that was when Ben realized that they had an audience.

Kuzya was there in the front entrance of the store, gripping his backpack with white knuckles, his face a rictus of surprise. And there were James and Paul, standing in the entry of the kitchen. James looked just as surprised as Kuzya, but Paul...Paul just looked disappointed, and that was perhaps the worst of all.

He wasn't looking at Carey when Carey said, "Ben, I...I didn't know you..."

And that was enough sharing about himself for the day.

"Well, you wanted to know more about me," he said with a grim smile.

Then he looked at James and Paul. "I can't be here right now."

"You don't have to-" Carey started to say, but Paul cut him off.

"Ben, you're coming with me."

Having a heart to heart with Paul – with anyone, really – was just about the last thing he felt like doing right about now.

"I really can't do this now," he said. His ability to deal with people was rapidly deteriorating. Apparently years without talking about himself had really atrophied his ability to be open, because now he felt like a mouse pinned in the spotlight, desperately searching for a dark corner to hide himself in.

Paul just grabbed him by the shoulder and steered him towards the door. "If you value your job, you're coming with me."

He wanted to argue, but all of the fight drained out of him until he just felt miserable and exhausted. That sadly wasn't a too unfamiliar feeling.

Ben let Paul lead him to the stairs up to his apartment, and tried not to think about if he'd ever be able to show his face here ever again.

~~~

Paul shoved him towards the couch and went off to his kitchen to fiddle around with something, letting Ben stew on his own for a while. It had been what Ben asked for, and yet it felt so much worse, waiting for the inevitable.

When Paul came back he offered Ben a mug of tea and his most unimpressed expression.

"Do you want to tell me what just happened in my storefront?"

Ben had half a mind to say that no, he didn't particularly care to, but he took a too-hot sip of tea and shrugged.

"I just...I wanted to know why he was upset with me. Because he's never..."

Paul nodded all too knowingly. "Because it's Carey, and Carey's never bothered by anything. Except, apparently, when he thinks his best friend doesn't trust him with his personal information."

Ben cupped the mug between his hands; the growing burn was easier to focus on than Paul's gaze.

"It's not exactly like he gushes about himself. I didn't expect it to all blow up like that."

"Well, I'm not saying he behaved well, either." Paul sighed, leaning back into his chair and lacing his hands over his stomach. "I think this whole bakery is probably due for an airing of dirty laundry soon. We have too many secrets and too much emotional constipation going around here, and maybe it worked for a while, but clearly it isn't anymore."

When Ben eyed him skeptically, Paul smiled flatly and looked him dead in the eyes. "Fine, I'll go first. I used to be a college hockey player. I won the Minnesota Mr. Hockey award in high school. I was in a car crash in college and now my left leg from the knee-down is more metal than bone. Baking was my next best thing to hockey. I inherited my uncle's building in Nashville, and here I am. Now it's your turn."

It was, quite possibly, the most he'd ever heard Paul say in one sitting. "You made eye contact the whole time," Ben breathed.

Paul nudged him with his foot – the right one, Ben realized. "When it's important, yes. Come on now, Cliff Notes version, make it easy on yourself."

Ben didn't really know if there _was_ an abbreviated version of what had happened, one that could condense all of the years of confusion and loneliness and heartbreak into a neat paragraph, but...maybe he wasn't giving Paul enough credit for being able to read between the lines.

He took a steadying sip of tea, placed the mug down on the coffee table, and met Paul's eyes.

"My mom was a baker. She was my best friend. She died when I was nine. My dad and I don't get along and haven't spoken since I was eighteen. I came to Nashville to get away from...everything. And..."

Ben breathed in slowly.

"...And this, here, is the only family that I have. And I really, really don't want to lose it because of how badly I just screwed up."

He had always imagined that he would feel small, if he spoke those words out loud. It was as if his secrets were the last few supports holding him up, and without them he would just collapse, a lump of fragile, vulnerable emotions left exposed and unwanted.

Never had he considered the sense of overwhelming relief when Paul smiled at him and said, "Okay."

For the first time in over twenty years, he felt like he could finally exhale.

And then Paul nudged him with his foot again and asked, "So what do you want to do next?"

"What can I do? I already made even more of an ass of myself in front of Carey, and he's..."

"Carey's going to do whatever Carey's going to do," Paul interrupted. "We can't control what he does next, but we can figure out what you're going to do next. The ball's in your court."

There were a lot of things that Ben thought that he'd _like_ to do – running away was pretty high on the list, he'd heard Tampa could be nice this time of year – but there was only one solution that truly felt like the right thing to do.

"When I was younger," he said slowly, "My mom always said that there was never a problem that a good apology pie couldn't fix. As long as you actually remembered to say you were sorry, too."

Paul's smile was slow and sly, and as he pushed his glasses up his nose, Ben had to wonder if there wasn't something about Paul Martin that was just the tiniest bit magical.

"Well," he said, "If there's one thing you and I both know, it's pies. Will any kind do?"

"Whatever's their favorite," Ben said. "But I don't know what Carey's is."

He hadn't exactly been lying when he said that the lack of communication had gone both ways.

"It's your lucky day." Paul stood up and brushed his hands on his pants. "I've got some jarred peaches in the pantry downstairs."

Ben frowned at the hand Paul offered him, but let Paul pull him to his feet anyway.

Paul didn't need words to know what he meant. "Do you think I can't tell which of my pies someone likes best? Finish your tea; we have an emergency apology pie to bake."

That moment felt more like the true meaning of family than any holiday ever could.

~~~

Ben knew where PK Subban's house was because PK had purchased desserts from Herb's for Halloween, and James had kept the address on file for the sake of customer accounts and also because he was incredibly nosy.

"It's easier than getting Carey to admit he's formally changed his address," was all he'd said as he handed Ben a piece of paper with the address on it.

He knew that PK wouldn't be home because the Preds were still away on a road trip, and he had to admit it was something of a relief. It wasn't that Ben had a problem with him, but this sort of conversation would be best kept between Ben and Carey.

Well. Ben, Carey, and Max, who was currently riding copilot in the passenger seat of Ben's car. Ben hadn't liked to leave him home alone for longer than he had to, and he'd thought maybe Max being there could help smooth things over.

(Kuzya had heartily agreed with this plan, because he said that nobody could ever be mad with "best puppy" around.)

The neighborhood that PK lived in was intimidatingly nice, more so when it was lit up with a plethora of expensive holiday lights, but Ben wouldn't have expected anything less. He still felt awkward, pulling into the driveway like he had a right to be there.

"C'mon, Max," he sighed as he opened the passenger door and grabbed his leash. Max hopped out, tail wagging cheerfully. At least one of them was confident.

He made a stop at the trunk of the car to retrieve the pie, placed there for safekeeping. The last thing he needed was Max having a quick snack on the way over.

Pie in one hand and leash in the other, Ben steeled himself and walked up the steps to the front door.

Some part of him really didn't expect Carey to answer the doorbell, but there he was, looking tired and drawn and extremely confused to find Ben on his doorstep at six-thirty at night with a pie and a dog.

Ben took a deep breath, and exhaled.

"My mom always said the best way to apologize was with a pie," he said, "Followed by the actual apology. So, here's the pie. It's peach. Paul said that's your favorite, and it's Paul, so he's probably right."

He held it out until Carey slowly moved to take it from him.

"And the other half..." He bit his lip.

"I apologize for what happened today. I didn't mean to yell at you, especially not at work like that. I'm sorry if I ever made you feel like I didn't trust you, because I never once felt like I couldn't confide in you, I just...it sounds clichéd, but I really have a lot of my own things to work through. I want to be close to people, but I guess when it comes right down to it I'm not so good at actually letting them in."

He chuckled, though he didn't really feel it.

Carey was still just standing there in the doorway, holding the pie, watching him.

The chuckle turned to a grimace.

"And...I'm sorry if I ever made you feel uncomfortable, because of my...feelings. I guess I misinterpreted some cues, and I'd thought for a while that...it doesn't matter what I thought. I just want you to know that I'm really happy for you and PK, and I wish you all the best, and if it's at all possible, I'd really like for us to be able to keep being friends. Please."

Ben was well aware that Carey's face was largely unemotional on a normal day, but it was particularly nerve-wracking to have that flat stare aimed in his direction as the seconds kept ticking by in silence.

He swallowed thickly.

"I'm...I guess I'll leave you alone then."

But before he even had a chance to turn around, Carey pushed the door open all the way. "Wait."

Carey looked chagrined for a moment, and then he smiled. The real kind of smile, the one that made his eyes squint a little.

"Your mom told you to apologize with a pie?" he said. "My mom's got a policy like that too. It's called 'apologize for being a dick or else you really are a dick.' And I was more than a bit of a dick."

He averted his eyes for a moment and grumbled in his surliest, Carey-est voice, "I guess you maybe weren't wrong about the jealousy thing."

That was...far more than Ben had ever expected from the infinitely emotionally unavailable Carey Price.

And yet all he could do was choke out, "Your mom said that?"

Carey gave him a sideways glance and smirked. Ben got the feeling that he appreciated the small moment of distraction. "That's about the gist of it, at least. C'mon, I can't eat a whole pie on my own. I was an athletic trainer once upon a time, you know, I have to live up to that at least a little bit."

He looked down at Max, sitting primly at Ben's feet. Max was being extremely well-behaved, and Ben knew it was entirely because he thought if he sat still and was a very good boy, Carey would give him the pie.

"This is Max, then?" Carey said, smiling down at him. "Kuzya's right, he's a pretty sweet dog."

Max popped right up when Ben took a step inside the door, pushing past him so that he could sniff all around the foyer, tugging at the end of the leash as he eagerly explored the new space.

"He can be a handful," Ben said, smiling fondly down at him because it was easier than looking at Carey. "But he's a good boy, most of the time."

He nearly startled when Carey clapped a large hand on his shoulder. But when he met Carey's eyes, there were none of the usual butterflies. Instead he just felt warm, the way he had with Paul. Like maybe they could get things on the right track for once.

Maybe they could have a fresh start.

He looked Carey in the eyes and smiled.

"Let me tell you about my mom. I think you would have liked her."

~~~

Ben and Max were once again hanging out on the couch when Cam showed up. Just like the last time, he let himself in without knocking first. But unlike the last time, when Ben followed after Max to greet him, Cam grabbed him by the back of the neck and hauled him down for a firm and rather thorough kiss.

For someone so small, he was surprisingly strong. And exceptionally motivated.

"Wow," Ben said when Cam finally let him up for air. "That's, uh. Really enthusiastic of you."

"What can I say?" Cam smiled. "I had a good reason to look forward to coming home."

Max whined at his feet and gave a short bark, evidently feeling that they weren't paying him nearly as much attention as they should be.

At the same time Cam and Ben looked at each other and agreed, "Max."

The good boy in question barked again, until Cam knelt down and wrestled him to the floor.

It was as Cam was rolling on the floor with Max, scratching his belly and entirely uncaring that he was still in a fairly expensive-looking suit, that he looked over his shoulder at Ben and asked, "Hey, how did things go with your friends? Did you guys work things out?"

Ben crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, marveling at how much warmer his house felt with other people in it. How much more it felt like a home.

He smiled down at Cam and nudged him with his socked foot.

"Yeah. It got a little bumpy there for a while, but I think we're in a good place now."

Cam beamed up at him and grabbed his foot, tugging on it. "Well then, come on, we should be celebrating."

"On the floor?"

Cam gestured around him. "Do you see a better place to do it? This is where all the cool kids are."

Ben couldn't really argue with that.

And it was as Ben was sitting on the floor in his front hall with his boyfriend and his boyfriend's dog, playing referee in a wrestling bout that was a little too evenly matched, that he realized that this time, he hadn't gotten second-best. He hadn't had to settle, or give up on his dreams.

This time, things finally worked out for Ben.

It had just taken him a little while to realize what he was searching for.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Kuzy and Paul will have fics. No, I do not know when those will come into being.
> 
> In the mean time, may I suggest you check out the lives of our friends over at [SJS Electrical](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16825456/chapters/39495556)?
> 
> Catch me at [swedishgoaliemafia on Tumblr](https://swedishgoaliemafia.tumblr.com/).


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